


Our Woundedness

by CharlotteCordelier



Series: Asclepius [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Felicity Smoak, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Inaccuracies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-01-07 02:24:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 54,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12223812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteCordelier/pseuds/CharlotteCordelier
Summary: AU Part 2: The Doctor (Smoak) is out, the Glades are screwed, and no one will pay to reopen the Robert Queen Memorial Clinic. This hero gig is crap.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a pushover with no medical degree.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity Smoak was not having a good summer. It had started with a manmade earthquake and a car vs. doctor encounter that she had definitively lost.

_Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. but it can also deepen the wound._

-Dr. Abraham Verghese

 

**Starling, 2013**

Felicity Smoak was not having a good summer. It had started with a manmade earthquake and a car vs. doctor encounter that she had definitively lost. She had a TBI, simple partial PTS, an ORIF, two CRIFs, and a burr hole that resulted in a three inch wide strip of her scalp, right above her ear, being shaved bare. She did not have: a job, a home, disability insurance, or many remaining personal belongings.

She was blissfully unaware of most of this for almost two weeks, until they started weaning her off of the really good drugs. Felicity panicked a little and the very nice nurse gave her some klonopin so that she could start breathing again. There was another acronym that her colleagues were worried about, with regards to her, but she was pushing that one far far to the back of her bruised mind. She had it. She knew it. She couldn’t think about it. She had other problems.

“I’m homeless,” she said as soon as Diggle walked in that day with her full fat decaf latte, one of the few foods she could reliably keep down.

“Um,” Digg said. “I got your coffee?”

“I don’t have anywhere to go, John. They’re going to discharge me next week, and I don’t have anywhere to go. Holy shit, John. Holy shit.”

“Okay okay okay.” Diggle set down both their coffees on her little side table. “Take a deep breath. It’s fine.

Her face was suddenly hot and her eyes were filling up and she couldn’t grip yet with either of her hands because of the scaphoid pins and breathing heavy made her ribs hurt. If she started crying now she might actually legitimately hurt herself.

“Oh no, don’t do this. Felicity. Don’t do this.” He leapt on her like a grenade, gripping her shoulders firmly. “Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Ready?”

They did that for a few minutes and then he mopped at her face and put the straw in her latte for her and helped her position it between her two braced hands.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But seriously.”

“Drink your latte, woman. You need the calcium.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m ready.”

“You say that,” Sin said, “but I don’t know if you mean it.”

“Roy said I looked okay, and he said it with a straight face.”

“Smoak, we’ve covered this. Roy is a dumbass.”

“But he’s got a terrible poker face.”

Sin sighed dramatically and went to the bathroom to get the small handheld mirror. Stone-faced, she passed it to Felicity.

“Oh shit,” Felicity said. She looked about as attractive as sweating cheese. She was pale, her hair was greasy and matted, half her face was still green from fading bruises, her cheekbones stuck out angrily, and there was that shaved stripe on the side of her head.

“Don’t worry about the hair,” Sin said. “It’s very edgy. All the cool lesbians are wearing it that way, so the straights should be copping it in a month or two.”

“Oh _shit_.”

“Listen, Smoak, I can soften this look.”

“I look like an extra out of _Fifth Element_!”

“I don’t know what that means, but it’s a problem that grooming can solve, we can solve it.”

“Sin, I don’t want to be rude, but--”

“Smoak. No one knows how to primp better than a queer preacher’s daughter from Bumblefuck, Mid-America.”

And Felicity would be damned if Sin wasn’t right. Sin washed and trimmed her hair, styled it so that it parted above the bald stripe. When tucked behind her ear, it hid the healing burr hole and revealed enough scalp to make her look edgy. When Sin applied the mascara and hot pink lipstick and a very scientific device called a color correction palette, Felicity realized she’d found A Look.

“Look who got hot,” Sin said, presenting her to Diggle like a prize brisket.

“Damn,” Diggle said, putting a straw in her latte. “You make that look good.”

“Sin did all the work.”

“I can do your face, too, G.I. Joe. It’s time you switched to an anti-aging moisturizer. And an eye cream.”

“That’s cold.”

“The truth hurts.”

Felicity giggled, drinking her coffee, and thought about how lucky she was. Other than the coups-contrecoups, the living in the hospital for two weeks, the plates and screws holding her together, etc., etc. She got really good care really fast. Her brain was behaving. The seizures had stopped. And her people kept showing up for her. Digg, every day. Roy and Sin almost as often.

One day, Honi brought a shoebox full of cards from her patients, and a surprise letter from Marisol, who had moved back to Coast City with her brother’s family and called Felicity her guardian angel. Honi kissed her on her undamaged forehead and told her he was out of omeprazole.

The next day, she told her unreasonably attractive, but clearly gay, PT Paul that she would take any punishment he dished out, because she had shit to do.

“We prefer not to call it punishment.”

“I said bring it on, Paul.”

Paul brought it.

When Sin dropped by later, she started muttering about setting spray and finishing powder, which Felicity found somewhat alarming. But not as alarming as the realization that her receptionist and now friend had probably transitioned from somewhat homeless to homeless homeless. As her brain settled itself back into its normal position, she was having more and more realizations, about life beyond her hospital bed.

“Sin,” she asked cautiously, “where are you staying these days?”

“I was wondering when you’d get around to asking. Took your time.”

“I have a hole in my head. Cut me some slack.”

“Don’t worry, I got a sweet spot and a new roommate.”

“Running water? Electricity?” These were not things you could take for granted.

“Check and check. And a view you wouldn’t believe.”

“And the roommate?”

“She’s got my back, Smoak. You don’t have to worry about me, okay?”

“Swear?”

“I swear.”

Felicity extended her less-damaged hand, pinky first. Gingerly, Sin took it.

“No gods.”

“No masters.”

 

* * *

 

“I upgraded to the La-Z-Boy,” Diggle announced, striding in with her now half-caf latte, as though he had mastered nuclear fission.

“Mazel tov?”

“I had my doubts at first, but then I thought, John, why are you playing around. You’re a grown ass man. Time for a grown ass man’s sofa. So it’s the Collins sectional, in Tarragon.”

“I’m...very happy for you. And your sofa.”

“Felicity, this is a great day.”

“I’m getting that.”

“The La-Z-Boy Collins sectional, in Tarragon, comes with a queen size pull out bed, with premium mattress.”

“O...kay.”

“You’re not homeless, woman. You’re coming to live with me.”

“Way to bury the lede!” she said and burst into tears.

“Oh, no, please. Don’t cry.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “My ribs can take it.”

“Yeah, but what about me,” he muttered, and approached for a cautious half-hug that wouldn’t put any pressure on any of her many broken parts.

 

* * *

 

The night after she moved into Digg’s living bedroom, Felicity woke herself up screaming. It had happened before, of course, but not in years. She throttled the scream off almost at once, but she could already hear Digg on his feet in the other room. He turned on several lights, in his room and in the den, before he approached the very comfortable fold out sofa. She was still gasping and couldn’t talk yet, so he just said gently that he was awake and that the light was on and that she was in his apartment.. He didn’t move that slowly, but he did move very smoothly. This was a very tactical Diggle, one she hadn’t seen before, outside the bat cave.

“Hey,” he said.

She gave him a little wave, pushing her sweaty hair out of her face. He walked around to the other side of the queen bed and eased himself onto it. He was within arm’s reach, but not touching. He looked forward, not at her. His weight seemed to give the mattress more substance, pinning it to the bed frame, and Felicity’s felt her heart back into her chest by that same gravity.

“Felicity, you know what this is, right?”

“It’s not, though, because you know it hasn’t been a month and, and...”

Diggle put out a hand on hers, warm and heavy and steadying. “I’ve seen you jump before in Verdant, at nothing. I’ve heard you lay into Oliver--oh, I know he always has it coming. And I know that, you know, the cat gets your tongue sometimes.”

Her eyes burned and she suddenly felt like she was choking on shame. Oh and then she actually was choking. Shit.

“Breathe, girl,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Breathe, Felicity.”

Felicity tried breathing. The breaths were ragged and her belly shuddered with the effort. But she did breathe.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” He sounded sad as he rubbed her back in slow circles, so she tried harder to stop.

“I know.” She sniffed and realized how wet her face was, that she must have been crying before she woke up.

“Nobody else noticed,” Digg reassured her. “Nobody else knows. I’m the only one who knows what I’m looking at. Three tours, remember?”

She nodded.

“I have seen this all before.”

Felicity wiped at her face and took a few steadier breaths.

“Do you want to tell me some of it? Just any little piece, sometimes. It’ll tide you over.”

“Um.”

“One time, I had a guy in a humvee, totally losing his shit. He hadn’t slept in like three days, and a couple weeks before that, well, something terrible happened in a place that I can't ever tell you about. And now this eighteen year old kid is having a mental breakdown right before we have go do something in another place we also can’t ever talk about. And all I can get him to say is ‘the dog, man, the dog,’ over and over again. And then we talked about dogs for two hours, and then we did our jobs.”

“Dogs are pretty great.”

Diggle laughed.

“Okay,” Felicity said. “When I was little, I saw something really scary. And then I didn’t talk for like a year.”

“You?” He snorted in disbelief.

“Me.”

“You? For a _year_?”

“They were dark times, Diggle,” she gave a watery chuckle.

“No shit.”

“Right?”

“That’s how it usually starts, you know,” he said, not too heavy. “You see something scary. Or something scary sees you.”

Felicity nodded.

“You want some cocoa? I’m going to take my cheat day early and make us some cocoa.”

 

* * *

 

Felicity woke up, as she had every morning of the last three weeks at Digg’s place, to the sound of his VitaMix going. She was pretty sure its motor was more powerful than the one under the hood in her hatchback. He had already been up, run, lifted weights, probably carried some little old ladies across the street. Then he came back, made a french press of coffee for her, a green tea for him, and a nutrient rich and reasonably tasty smoothie for both of them. It would have been a lot more pleasant if she hadn’t _needed_ taking care of quite so badly. It was galling. Once she was off the medium-good drugs, it really started to eat at her. Never, never in her life, had she felt so defenseless, even when she was.

But it was hard to take care of yourself when you had a brace on your right wrist, a long arm cast on the left, a walking cast on your right foot, ribs that still weren’t up to actual laughter, and occasional debilitating vertigo. Plus, there was the other thing. She couldn’t bring herself to eat much in the way of solid food, and it wasn’t just because she couldn’t use a knife and fork at the same time. At night, she could only sleep with QVC or Spanish language sports on. During the day, she tried to re-learn a little coding online, but typing was a challenge, especially with the palsy in her left hand. Diggle never commented on any of it, just kept plying her with smoothies.

“So,” he said, pouring her handcrafted boutique dark roast. “Paul says you could be out of the boot in two weeks? ”

“Yep.”

“And the cast after that?”

Felicity shrugged. She did not want to talk about the cast.

“Because I was thinking we could take a little trip.”

“Yes,” Felicity said. “Oh, fuck yes. Can we go, I don’t know, camping or something? Mt. Rainier? I want out of your apartment. I mean, I love your apartment, it’s lovely, and the Tarragon sectional is truly remarkable. But I need to get as far away from it as I possibly can before I go full Havisham on you.”

“I had in mind something a little farther than Mt. Rainier.”

“Gotham? Key West? Leaf-peeping in the Adirondacks?”

“I was thinking more like the North China Sea.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diggle threw them both out of the plane. His deep belly laughs did not mask the fact that she was plunging towards the earth at what felt like the speed of light. He was enjoying this. She was going to kill him. She could poison his smoothies. She could spike any of his food with traceless toxins, really. She could file through the handle of one of the enormous weights he was always lifting above his head. The litany of conspiracy to murder was the only thing that kept the contents of her stomach inside her stomach until they landed.

_Do what is right, and do it now._

-Dr. Atul Gawande

  


**North China Sea, 2013**

“Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu…”

“Are you praying?”

“Yes, the prayer you pray when death is coming!”

“If you’re so scared, why did you insist on sitting up front?”

“It was the only seat with a seatbelt!”

“Which will come in handy when we hit the water at 180 miles an hour.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she shrieked.

“Which will not happen.”

The pilot spoke and just like that, the world’s most inhospitable looking island appeared in the fog. It looked like somewhere Peter Jackson would have loved to shoot the worst parts of Middle Earth.

“I think that means we’re here.”

“Lian Yu,” she said. "Or Mordor."

Diggle ducked back into the cargo hold and Felicity managed to turn her sore, jolted body to look at her friend and roommate more directly. The son of a bitch was putting on a parachute.

“You said those were for just in case!”

“Yeah, just in case we made it here.”

“Diggle! My bones aren’t even knitted all the way!” Unconsciously, she pulled her aching arms in closer to her chest. No need to mention the crippling fear of heights, too.

“Come on,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“No. Hell. No.”

The ensuing struggle did not do her, or Digg, any credit. Really, the only hero was the pilot, who kept the plane aloft while Digg forcibly removed her from her seat, browbeat her into a harness, and then connected that harness to his.

“All right, Felicity, on three!”

“I hate you so much right now.”

“One!”

Diggle threw them both out of the plane. His deep belly laughs did not mask the fact that she was plunging towards the earth at what felt like the speed of light. He was enjoying this. She was going to kill him. She could poison his smoothies. She could spike any of his food with traceless toxins, really. She could file through the handle of one of the enormous weights he was always lifting above his head. The litany of conspiracy to murder was the only thing that kept the contents of her stomach inside her stomach until they landed. John did everything he could do set her down gently, but it was skydiving after all.

She hopped on her good ankle, wobbling, so that Digg had to hold the back of her jacket so she could boot and attempt to rally. Mostly it was just booting. Quite a bit, considering she hadn’t had any solid food in like a day.

“Thanks for waiting until we touched down.”

“I hate your breathing guts,” Felicity said, dry heaved, and spit. She sat down and gave herself a once over. Everything hurt, but that probably had more to do with the plane ride than anything else. She pulled her right foot out of her sturdy hiking boot and tried a little flexion. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. She re-adjusted the heavy brace and put the boot back on again. Felicity shifted her weight, preparing to stand, when she saw the makeshift memorial: a particolored mask pierced by an arrow, on the top of a stick. It was very _Apocalypse Now_ . Did that make it also very _Heart of Darkness_? And if so, did that also make it Homeric?

“Let’s move,” Digg said. She pushed herself to her feet, limping only a little. The camo tactical jacket that Digg had loaned her was about five sizes too big, but it covered her arm brace and her wrist brace and also held her current cocktail of drugs in an inside pocket. Between that, and the skinny jeans, and her new hair, she was looking and feeling very punk rock.  Ahead of her, Digg stopped and held up a fist.

“What is it?”

“I thought I heard something,” he said, and started moving again.

Underneath Felicity’s foot, something clicked.

“Digg!”

“Don’t move.” He pulled out a pocket knife and knelt beside her clearing away some dirt.

“It’s my right foot, John. I can’t stand on it forever.” Her ankle was already screaming at her to take the weight off.

“It’s a landmine I’m going to try to disarm it.”

“You can’t,” someone shouted in a very familiar voice, from very high up. “Diggle! Back away!”

She turned her face up into the light to see shirtless Oliver Queen in cargo pants, doing his best George of the Jungle up in the tree canopy. And he was doing it really well. The height didn’t even both him. It was just unfair, really.

“Felicity,” he yelled, “don’t move!”

Olive fired an arrow over the treetops and it didn’t a genius to see that yes, this was going in a very watch-out-for-that-tree direction. She lifted up her right arm, since the left one didn’t have the range of motion to even attempt it. _Please, please, don’t let me break again._ Then he dropped.

“Watch her head!” Diggle yelled, as he hustled away from Felicity.

Oliver crashed into her. It was like being hugged by a human two-by-four. It was reassuring, but it also hurt like hell. She almost didn’t notice the landmine going off behind them. Oliver must have been listening, though, because he folded her up tightly, cupping his hands around the back of her head. Felicity landed on top of him and felt the air knocked immediately out of her. She rolled off, not able to even appreciate the novelty of rubbing against Oliver Queen. Cradling her reconstructed left humerus in her right hand, she stared up at the leaves and waited for her diaphragm to chill.

“Felicity?” Oliver said. “Are you okay? What happened to your hair?”

“Move,” Digg said, throwing a none-too-friendly elbow. He did a quick but thorough examination of her head, then moved on to the rest of her. “Nothing broken this time, I don’t think.”

“This time?” Oliver asked, moving back into her field of vision.

“Oof,” she said, breathing again and recognizing immediately his perfect, perfect workout smell. _Don’t say it out loud. Don’t say it out loud. Don’t say it out loud._ “Hi.”

“What do you mean, ‘this time,’ Diggle?” Oliver said, not looking away from her.

“You’re a hard man to find,” Digg ignored him.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

“Too late,” Felicity said. “Help me up.”

Oliver did and frowned when her right ankle refused to hold her weight. He ducked, offering his shoulder. Felicity looked away and shook her head. Her left arm wouldn’t hold her that way either.

“Come here,” Diggle said and approached her from the right, so she could put her better arm behind his neck, and picked her up, bridal style. It was a move they’d practiced so often in the last few months, that it didn’t even embarrass her anymore.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” Oliver said in a different tone, taking in her somewhat battered state.

“Yeah?” Felicity said, her pride suddenly smarting. “Well, you shouldn’t have left. Now take us to your treehouse of solitude, or whatever.”

It turned out not to be a treehouse, but the burned out remains of a plane that was unsettlingly similar to the one they had just exited.

“Is this where you lived when you were here?” Felicity asked, as Digg set her down on a storage drum and stretched his back. “I mean, the first time you were here.”

“For some of it.” Oliver turned his back on them to put a shirt on--more was the pity.

“Could you at least pretend you’re glad to see us?” she asked. “Digg’s missing work. I’m missing PT and new employee orientation at Glades Memorial. And this morning, he threw me out of a plane, and I think he liked it. You could at least offer us a water. Or an ibuprofen.”

“Fresh out of ibuprofen,” he said, turning back to her with the faintest impression of a half smile on his face. He approached her drum. “I am happy to see you.”

His voice was quiet, private, and just like that, she didn’t feel any pain at all.

“What happened to your arm? And your leg?”

“And my hair, I know.” She looked at Oliver and he looked back. “Digg didn’t tell you, before you left?”

John cleared his throat. “What had happened was--”

“Didn’t tell me what,” Olive turned on him, looking a little more Shere Khan than George.

“I went back into the Glades after the quake,” Felicity said quickly, hoping to avoid a testosterone conflagration. “In an egregious violation of the prime directive of first responders: never bring another victim to the scene. Roy saved my life, twice. But I still got...a little bit...hit by a truck.”

“A truck?” Oliver winced, closing his eyes.

“Yeah, which is what makes my jumping heroically out of an airplane this morning so much more impressive.”

Diggle snorted.

“I know why you’re here,” Oliver said. “But I’m not not coming back to Starling City. I can’t. My mission, my father’s list, it was a fool’s crusade. And I failed. Malcolm Merlyn destroyed the Glades. Tommy died, and the Hood couldn’t stop it. So don’t ask me to put it on again. Ever.

“This isn’t about you being the vigilante,” Diggle said. “This is about you being Oliver Queen. Your mother’s in prison, Oliver. Her trial’s coming up. Thea’s out on her own. Your family needs you.

“So does Starling,” Felicity added. “No one is rebuilding in the Glades, not even your family’s clinic. It’s a tent city Stellmoor International is positioning itself for a hostile takeover. They will chop your family’s business up and sell it for parts. Everything good QC does for Starling will just dry up and blow away.”

“Listen I get why you had to leave, Oliver,” Diggle said. “Probably better than anybody else. I’ve been there. And after what happened, nobody can blame you for leaving. But it’s time to come home.”

 

* * *

 

“Why am I missing my new job’s employee orientation for this, again?” Felicity muttered.

“You have a very important role to play in this meeting,” Oliver said as the elevator doors closed.

“As a prop. A pity prop. To remind them of the poor unfortunates under the Queen family umbrella.” Felicity was wearing some of her rescued wardrobe: black pencil skirt, crisp white shirt sleeveless, and pink Mizunos for her ankle’s sake. Combined with her undercut and the pink scars on her left arm, she was feeling very Post-Apocalyptic Business Barbie. Except Barbie probably knew more about business. And Barbie probably hadn’t taken half a percocet to get her through the morning.

“Just sit there and look--”

“Damaged? Pathetic?”

Oliver made his unhappy face, lips pressed together.

“I don’t mind, but I expect some show of appreciation.”

“What did you have in mind? Expensive wine? Jewelry?”

“Cash, Oliver. Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but Smoak women prefer cash.”

That, at least, got a smile out of him as the elevator door opened and admitted them to the executive level floor. Felicity followed Oliver in, easing herself into a chair while he traded barbs with Ice Bitch Business Barbie. Isabel Rochev was truly, impressively cruel. Felicity had met a Madam just like her one time, under very different circumstances, involving a broken beer bottle and a very unhappy customer She was beginning to wonder if she shouldn’t have taken that percocet when the masked gunmen broke in.

“Oliver Queen! You failed this city!”

“That’s his line,” Felicity muttered. Oliver looked at her. Definitely should have skipped the percocet.

“Get down!” Diggle yelled, stepping into the breach. “Fall back! Oliver, go!”

Felicity dropped to her hands and knees under the conference table and saw Oliver hustling Ice Bitch Barbie towards the door.

“Go! Go! Go!” Diggle was yelling, right behind her. She should probably stay right here, next to the bodyguard. Except of course, that Oliver was turning around and coming back, just in time to face one of the men who had killed the mayor.

“Shit,” Felicity muttered. She crawled forward, grabbing the metal handle of now-shattered glass door. With her good arm, she swung it hard at the base of the gunman’s skull. “Sorry!” she couldn’t help saying. “Sorry.”

Oliver gave her a very strange look and then brought her down to the floor, much more gently than he had on Lian Yu, as a hail of bullets passed above them. Maybe she should have taken more percocet, and not less. And that was an instinct she would trust, next time, because for the second time in a week, one of her partners in crime was jumping from lethal heights with her in tow. Oliver held her tight--so tight--as he kicked through the office window below them and released the chain so they swung past the desk and over to the floor.

This time, she didn’t have the breath knocked out of her, and she took just a little time to really notice what it felt like to get a full body hug from him. Yummy, mostly, if it weren’t for the glass in her hair. Oliver rolled her gently to the side, and pushed her hair away from her face, looking the question at her. She nodded. He helped her to her feet, running his hands over her shoulders and shaking the remaining glass from her hair.

“Do I have to go back up there?” she asked, quietly.

“The police are going to want to talk to us,” he said.

“Cops. My favorite.”

 

* * *

 

“I can’t get used to you in that uniform, Detective Lance,” she said, surprising herself by smiling at the older man. Was she going soft in her twenties? Duvid would be so disappointed.

“It’s Officer now. And I’m just glad it still fits.” He looked her up and down. “They hurt you?”

“No new damage.”

“Good. You look good, by the way.”

“Thanks, Detective. Officer.”

“You, uh, heard anything from our mutual friend lately?” he asked quietly.

“No, but…” Felicity leaned in. “Don’t count him out just yet, okay?”  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Digg and Oliver headed for his office. “Stay safe, Detective,” she said and hustled after them, closing the office door behind them. “Thanks for the save, really, but you did not have to throw me out a damn window.”

“I couldn’t have fought back without giving Isabel Rochev and and the hoods a pretty good idea of what I’m capable of.”

“I think what Felicity’s wondering is whether you avoided taking those hoods on. And, Oliver, she’s not the only one wondering.”

“I told you, I did not come back to Starling City to be the Vigilante.”

“But they came after you, Oliver. You could have taken them out.”

“No, I couldn’t Diggle. Look there’s a part of being the Hood that neither one of you are considering: the body count.”

“Excuse me for saying this,” Felicity interrupted. “While I am genuinely, authentically glad that you are showing some introspection here with regards to death, when exactly did the body count start bothering you?”

“Since Tommy,” Diggle answered.

 _Right_. She felt an immediate flush of shame. She had missed so much of the immediate aftermath, in a cocoon of IV drugs and TBI symptoms, that it was hard to remember that it was a disaster that had happened to thousands of other people. The pain was personal.

“After he found out my secret, you know what Tommy called me? A murderer. He was right. My best friend died thinking that I was a murderer and anyone that I kill dishonors his memory.”

“Then don’t!” she said. “You have locked up hundreds of criminals, alive and sometimes well.”

“But I could have killed all of them. Because when I put on the hood, it’s kill or be killed. That is what kept me alive. That’s why I should have stayed on the island.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” she argued. “That island was _Lord of the Flies_ , not Eden!”

“If the two of you won’t help me save my family’s company, I’m going to find someone who will.” And with that, he was gone.

“Did Oliver Queen just fucking flounce on us?” she asked, incredulous.

“No comment,” Diggle said.

 

* * *

 

She was in the basement, recovering from her PT, when Digg and Oliver entered from the club. Like a landed fish, she struggled to her feet from the modest puddle of sweat she was lying in. Barefoot, in leggings and a sports bra, she hop-ran over to the nearest table to grab a holey ARMY sweatshirt and pull it over her head as fast as her left arm would allow her. Oliver’s torso wasn’t the only one with secrets.

“What happened?” she asked, as soon as she saw their faces.

“The hoods have Thea,” Diggle said.

“What?”

“You didn’t hear the gunfire?” Oliver asked, somewhat incredulous as they near the bottom of the stairs.

“I had my headphones in.”

“She won’t do her PT without Beyonce,” Diggle added. “Don’t even ask. Don’t even try.”

“Wait, wait!” Felicity step-hopped towards the base of the stairs just ahead of them. “Let me!” She hit the lights and watched Oliver’s face carefully as he looked out over the remade lair. He didn’t look displeased...

“I taught myself AutoCAD when I got out of the hospital, to pass the time. I had some ideas. Digg did the heavy lifting. Literally.”

Digg smiled at her and she smiled back. They did good.

“We need to find these guys,” Oliver said, examining the remodeled cave.

“I’ve been trying since we touched down,” Felicity said. “Oracle put me through hacker boot camp over the summer, but it’s not like I’m on her level. See, look, I kept the spawning ladder.”

“Salmon ladder.”

“Whatever. I like watching you do it.”

“Thea’s boyfriend--”

“Roy.”

“Roy said one of them was missing part of his hand. Maybe a veteran? Can you check hospital records for that kind of thing?”

“Oliver, hospital records are the only thing I can reliably check for any kind of thing.” She hobbled over to her new, ergonomic work station with wrist-friendly keyboard and sat down. “But you can’t look.”

“I’m sorry?”

“This is privileged health information, it’s none of your business. I’ll tell you if I get a name.”

Diggle turned around, crossing his arms.

“It’s absolutely my business--”

“I have an obligation to--”

“I need to find these guys, Felicity!”

“Then turn around or I’ll brick the damn computer!”

He turned.

“Cross-checking by race and age. Got one. Jeff Deveau. African-American, late 30s.

“What else can you get on him?”

“Former Marine.”

“Explains how he can handle himself,” Digg said. “Did he lose his hand overseas?”

“No. In the earthquake.” Felicity read the rest of his file and kept her mouth resolutely shut. Those notes were psych notes and they wouldn’t help, anyway.

“Phone records, please. I want to know who he’s in contact with.”

“He’s made a lot of calls to a church in the Glades, something called Standing Strong.” She gasped “Digg, that’s the one you wanted me to go to.”

“What is it?” Oliver asked

“A quake survivor support group. Great place to meet three other guys as angry as you, looking for a little payback.”

“Get me an address, please.”

“You’re gonna need this,” she pushed herself to her feet and brought him to the tactical box. “I had it custom made. How’d I do?” She’d done really, really well and she knew it. But like some overeager golden retriever puppy, she needed the pat on the head.

“It’s perfect,” Oliver sighed. He looked resigned, though, not happy.

“I’m sorry about what I implied earlier today, that you didn’t care about the body count. I had a long summer and I think I just...I took a different oath from you, you know. And I know that yours occasionally means being a killer. But maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe there’s another way.”

He looked far away and a little sad.

“They have my sister. What other way is there?”

Well. That was the question.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity took a hard look at herself in the staff bathroom’s mirror. She’d been at her new job for exactly seven hours and she was beginning to wonder if maybe she should have gone into dermatology after all. She’d read Five Days at Memorial and while it had been very moving, she had no desire to live those five days. She certainly had no desire to live those five days over and over again, and it was beginning to look like that was what she had signed up for.

_"When you work in emergency medicine, you are seeing patients who are the least common denominator as far as human beings go; people who are heartbreakingly stupid and dirty and drunk and high and obnoxious--unbelievably obnoxious. These people have all flowed out of the darkest side of life. And when you are finished with them, that's mostly where they'll return. So each of you who is thinking you want to go into emergency medicine will have to ask yourself, 'Do I really want to do this?'" I tapped my chest. "I know the answer for myself--every day I work I'm taking care of someone who is just like my grandfather, someone just like my mother. But everyone in this room needs to ask himself or herself, 'Do I want to spend the rest of my life with addicts and idiots and drunks and psychotics? Is this what will make me happy?'"_

_I peered at all of them over the top of the microphone. "Very few sane people answer yes.”_

-Dr. Pamela Grim

 

**Starling 2013**

Felicity took a hard look at herself in the staff bathroom’s mirror. She’d been at her new job for exactly seven hours and she was beginning to wonder if maybe she should have gone into dermatology after all. She’d read _Five Days at Memorial_ and while it had been very moving, she had no desire to live those five days. She certainly had no desire to live those five days over and over again, and it was beginning to look like that was what she had signed up for.

There was power, most of the time. There was water, sometimes hot. There were patients--thousands of them. There were staff, dwindling rapidly. There were not: enough drugs, enough gloves, enough linen, enough autoclaves, enough food in the cafeteria, or even spare scrubs in staff room. It was like the Bizarro Queen Clinic, with no order or warmth or preventive medicine. That morning, a pharmacist had simply walked off the job, because he didn’t even levonorgestrel for a rape survivor. Felicity had spent her lunch break running to a pharmacy in a better part of town, buying some, and delivering it to the woman.

“We got one for you, Smoak!” Diaz, the charge nurse yelled through the door.

“Coming!” She was on somewhat restricted duty for the next couple weeks, until she got full clearance from her own doctors, at the much more hospital-like hospital Starling General. The remaining ER workers were still grateful to have a hand, any hand, even with low-priority patients.

“Car vs. parked car,” Diaz said. “No seatbelt. Cops need us to clear him ASAP. Curtain four.”

“Right,” Felicity said. “On it.” She headed for the exam area and pulled back the curtain to find a uniformed SCPD officer and Roy Harper, bloody and handcuffed to the gurney. “Son of a bitch.”

“Hey, Doc,” he said, with a joyless smile.

“Give us a minute,” she said to the cop by the bed.

“Can’t leave him. It’s protocol,” he said flatly. _Cops_.

“I’m his doctor and I need a minute alone with him.”

“Protocol.”

“You’re in my hospital, he’s my patient, and we’re going to play this by my rules.” She gave him her best White Coat Authority.

The cop wavered. Felicity’s hackles rose. Full Loud Voice Engaged.

“He’s handcuffed to the damn gurney! What is he going to do, bleed on me? Go get a cup of coffee or a doughnut or jack off or whatever it is cops do when they’re not getting in my fucking way!”

The cop exited.

“Damn, Doc,” Roy said, impressed.

“It’s been kind of a day. Hold still, I’m going to grab an ultrasound.” She ducked out of the curtained area in the opposite direction of the cop, grabbing a small rolling cart and dragging it back in with her before anyone else could claim it.

“I don’t think I’m hurt.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Let me check your brain box first.” She started with his pupils and slowly went to work on the rest of him, until she went to check him for abdominal bleeding with the ultrasound.

“Isn’t this a pregnant lady thing?”

“Why, you late this month?”

Roy snorted--and then a terrible thought occurred to her.

“Oh, Roy, please tell me you are using protection.”

“No, please, can we not--let’s just--do the pregnant lady thing” He was brick red and attempting to sink into the mattress and thereby disappear.

“You’re handcuffed to the bed, genius. Are you or are you not using prophylactics with the Princess Queen.”

“She’s on the pill,” he muttered.

Felicity breathed a sigh of relief and administered a dollop of sonigel.

“That’s cold,” he complained.

“I need to see your insides. I want to make absolutely sure that if you die in police custody, I can pursue criminal charges against them with a clear conscience.”

“I think I liked you better when we were in the clinic.”

“I think I liked me better, too,” she admitted.

“Hey, you know our...friend?”

“Sin?”

“No.”

“Honi?”

“No, Doc,” he dropped his voice, “the Hood.”

“Never met him.”

“Oh, come on.” Roy looked at her with the kind of contempt that only the under-20 crowd can muster.

“I concede nothing,” she said, working her way through his abdominal cavity.

“He’s not the only one out there.”

“What?”

“There’s another one, in the Glades. Like Black Widow, but she’s blonder and taller.”

“Since when?”

“I saw her a week ago. I think only goes after men.”

“Huh.” Felicity focused on the ultrasound’s small screen, seeing nothing but healthy organs. “You know, I’ve been seeing more than a few scumbags coming through with blunt force trauma to the head, the knee, and the nuts.”

“That’s her!” he said, grinning. She sighed, handing him a clean paper towel to wipe away the jelly and reaching for a bandage for his sprained wrist, which she wrapped up quickly before he could refuse it.

“Roy, listen to me. If you keep chasing these people, for whatever reason, you are going to get arrested and sooner or later you are going to end up in Iron Heights.”

“Better off in jail than in here. No offense.”

“You wouldn’t be here at all if you weren’t crashing stolen cars. Full offense.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Roy?”

“Yeah?”

“Hypothetically, I could leave a window open and go looking for some gauze.”

“Thanks, but I’m okay.”

“Okay. Just saying.”

“Oh, um. Can I ask a favor?”

“Sure.”

“If I give you Thea’s phone number, will you call her and let her know which precinct I’m at this time?”

 

* * *

 

“Welcome to the jungle,” Felicity said in greeting, propping open a side door for Digg and Oliver. “Lasciate ogne speranza.”

Diggle and Oliver exchanged a look.

“Let me give you nickel tour. Just stay behind me and try not to get in anyone’s way.”

“Where are all the doctors?” Oliver asked, viewing the barely-controlled chaos with fresh eyes.

“Updating their resumes. Oh, okay, that’s Barefoot Steve. Do not get within smell range of Barefoot Steve. Shit. He’s coming this way. Watch your step, here, and we’ll just duck into the stairwell.” Felicity gave a sigh of relief as the fire door closed behind them. “Thanks, guys, I’m all out of Vick’s.”

Diggle and Oliver exchanged another look.

“So. Ready for socialized medicine yet?” she asked, with a slightly worn smile.

“It’s looking a little rough out there,” Diggle noted evenly.

“Well, we’re running low on everything except untreated ambulatory schizophrenics, so yeah. It’s a little rough out there.”

“Felicity, you don’t have to work here.” Of course, of course, that was the first thing out of Oliver’s mouth.

“You want I should bail on these people, along with everybody else?” she asked, hackles rising.

“Come to work at Queen Consolidated,” he said. “I’ll get you a job in Applied Sciences.”

“You mean the Earthquake Department?”

He winced. “Maybe we need a house doctor.”

“I’m not a real doctor yet, Oliver. I have to finish my residency. And since the Queen Clinic has been condemned, this is it.”

“What about Starling General?”

“They’re not colleges,” she snapped. “You can’t just bounce back and forth between them and hope to come up with a degree. I’m lucky they had a resident leave so that a spot opened up for me."

“Lucky?” he asked, incredulous.

“I think what Felicity’s trying to say is that, in the absence of the Queen Clinic, she’s found a place to finish her residency where she can make a difference.”

“I’ll sponsor a spot for you at Starling General,” Oliver offered.

“For fuck’s---Oliver, that’s not how it works. Even for you.”

“We all need to have secret identities now,” he argued. “If I’m going to be Oliver Queen, CEO, why can’t you be Felicity Smoak, in-house MD at Queen Consolidated?”

“Because I’m no longer an employee of Queen Consolidated. Because I don’t want to do concierge medicine. Because my short term disability ran out this summer, while you were _abroad_ and I had to make other arrangements, without regard to your tender sensibilities. Because I would have thought you, of all people, would respect a person’s mission.”

“I can’t very well travel across town every time we need to talk about how we spend our nights.”

“And I love spending the night with both of you.” She closed her eyes. “Three, two, one… I worked my ass off to get where I am, at the age that I am, with the skills that I have, and your commute is the least of my worries. So yes, I will stay here in this ER, where it is like St. Patrick’s Day every day but without enough banana bags to go around, and I will finish my residency, and I will do it on my terms. I am my own secret identity.”

“My secret identity is his black driver,” Digg said mildly.

“Fine,” Oliver said.

“Fine.”

“We’ll fix your supply problem.” Oliver took a deep breath and, like the society son that he was, pivoted to something more pleasant. “Let me know what your schedule is this week. I’d like to take you and Digg and Carly out to Table Salt to catch up on what I missed when I was _abroad_.”

Felicity looked at John, raising an eyebrow. He shook his head.

“Whatever,” she said, hoping the boys would figure it out without her. Doing their bromance work for them was too much for her today. “My break’s over. I have to go.”

“Felicity,” Oliver said, a little more warmly. “Thank you for the tour.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “You might want to go out the way you came in. Alderman Blood is out front giving a press conference.”

“I think we can handle it.”

“You’ve been out of town,” she added, “so maybe you haven’t heard. But the most dangerous place in Starling is between that man and a microphone.”

 

* * *

 

Suturing Oliver’s ankle with two almost-good hands wasn’t easy, but it helped that he wasn’t worried about neatness or scarring. The bullet had just nicked him, thank G-d. With a little less luck, it might have blown his ankle clean away. Felicity had even talked him into letting her use the tiniest bit of a local, so the stitches wouldn’t hurt him. He seemed hurt enough, in her professional opinion.

“So far so good?” she asked, adding a little ointment.

Oliver nodded. Deftly, she dressed it with clean gauze, noting with mild despair that the lair was better stocked than the hospital.

“Is it harder,” he asked, looking at her braced wrists, “for your hands?”

“Not as hard as some things,” she sighed. “Typical that the cops would go after you instead of the actual thieves. The police state at its finest.”

“The authorities have always gone after the vigilante,” Digg pointed out.

“This time was different,” Oliver said, pulling his sock on over the dressing.

“Why, because this time it’s Laurel leading the charge?”

 _Oh shit_ , Felicity thought. They definitely had not straightened things out without her.

“Because they got in my way,” he growled, raising his voice. “I can’t make things better as Oliver Queen and now I can’t make things better as the vigilante. So what if Laurel’s involved?”

“Knock it off!” she snapped.

“It’s alright, Felicity.”

“No, it’s not.” She turned on Oliver. “You don’t get to yell at John just because you happen to be having a lousy week. You’re just pissed because he invoked the Almighty Laurel! But guess what? We had a lot of lousy weeks without you! And you’re not the only one whose relationship crashed and burned this summer!”

“Felicity,” Diggle said, soothingly.

“What are you talking about?” Oliver asked her, ignoring Digg.

“I’m talking about you keep bringing up Carly, but you’re so involved with yourself that you haven’t noticed the look he gets or the look I give you every time that you do.”

“What is she talking about?” he turned to Digg now, asking over her head, like she was speaking fucking Etruscan.

“Me and Carly pulling the pin. It happened when you were gone.”

“Being the your wingman was a strain,” Felicity said. “My moving into his apartment because I had nowhere else to go was a strain. No, John, he needs to hear this.”

“This wasn’t just about what we were doing, Oliver.” Diggle sounded maddeningly calm. This isn’t just about you, man, or Felicity. I couldn’t separate what was going on with me and Carly and what went on with my brother.”

“Deadshot.”

“I guess I couldn’t hate him and love her at the same time. See? You are not the only one having trouble reconciling two sides of himself.”

Felicity, tired, sore, and 100% done with performing their emotional labor, grabbed her purse and headed for the stairs, not even caring that she was limping where they could see.

 

* * *

 

As usual, after the class that Diggle had convinced her to start attending (in lieu of support groups), Felicity ended up in the bat cave. She didn’t like being alone, and she was much more alone at Diggle’s apartment than she was in the quiet vault beneath a club full of revelers. Back in her leggings and purloined ARMY sweatshirt, she felt almost cozy in front of her array of state of the art computers. She was even learning how to use them, properly. So far, she hadn’t done much more than tinker with some of Oracle’s code, but it still felt damn good to know she could peek in on the SCPD whenever she liked.

Which gave her an idea. She took a break, stretching her wrists out, and slipping her right brace back on. The scaphoid bone and its pin were almost ready to do without, but typing for long periods of time was a bitch. Now, she thought, if I were a real hacker, how would I do this? And one by one, the walls fell before her. Felicity gasped and reached for her phone.

“Tell me,” Oliver said in her ear.

“Good news! I hacked into FEMA’s server all on my own! I did it!”

“And?”

“You could show a little appreciation for my personal growth here.”

“Felicity.”

“Right, the bad news. The latest shipment, including but not limited to propofol, fentanyl, insulin, amoxicillin, narcan, epinephrine, atropine, and oxytocin left the warehouse five minutes ago.”

She had shown him the hospital herself, so she did not need to ask which suit he would be wearing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a good thing that she wasn’t buying this fancy ass skin cream with her own money. This was like, grocery money she was spending. It was fabulous, though. Apparently pearl was a traditional ingredient in Korean beauty. Felicity approved and devoutly hoped that Oliver would forget to ask her to return it. It wasn’t like they’d stolen it. It was paid for. Maybe she could just call it bartering for medical services, like an old-timey doctor accepting eggs or a pie.

_Where there’s a doctor, it’s always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows._

-Margaret Atwood, _Alias Grace_

 

**Starling, 2013**

Felicity gave a little shriek and pulled the bluetooth out of her ear. Whatever device had been deployed on the other end of the connection was creating feedback that had actually blown her speaker out. And Oliver’s too--complete radio silence.

“What the fuck?” she asked, turning to Digg.

“I have no idea.”

And neither did Oliver, when he showed up twenty very tense minutes later. He described a blonde vigilante in a black suit, just like Roy had mentioned. The sonic piece, that was new, and would explain some hearing damage she’d seen on some particularly shady characters at Glades Memorial.

 

* * *

 

It was a good thing that she wasn’t buying this fancy ass skin cream with her own money. This was like, grocery money she was spending. It was fabulous, though. Apparently pearl was a traditional ingredient in Korean beauty. Felicity approved and devoutly hoped that Oliver would forget to ask her to return it. It wasn’t like they’d stolen it. It was paid for. Maybe she could just call it bartering for medical services, like an old-timey doctor accepting eggs or a pie.

She resisted the urge to adjust her skirt. It was shorter than anything she’d worn in ages, but it screamed _victim_ along with her full hands, curled hair, lackadaisical stride, and extremely delicate complexion. Exhaling through her pursed lips, she tried not to think about what the Dollmaker’s last victim had sounded like, when the epoxy cut off the air supply.

“Leaving the last store now,” she said, trying to look vulnerable. She was out of practice.

“Go to the rendezvous point,” Oliver said in her ear. “Stay in public.”

“Just for the record,” Lance added, “I’m not a huge fan of dangling helpless girls in front of psychopaths like meat.”

Felicity tried not to roll her eyes. It would only ruin the damsel in distress effect.

“She volunteered.” Even with the voice modification, she could hear Oliver’s frustration.

“Well, she must really believe in you.”

“So did your daughter,” Oliver said.

Oh good. The Almighty Laurel. It shouldn’t bother her. Felicity couldn’t pinpoint why it did. Maybe because she herself was terrible at letting go. Of anything.

“She suffered a loss. Grief’s got a way of shifting a person’s belief. But then you know all about that. You’ve lost people too, right?”

“Why would you say that?”

Felicity wished at that moment, more than anything, more than peace in the Holy Land, that she and Diggle could see each other’s faces for this exchange. Silently, she mouthed several curse words.

“Why else would you be doing this?” Lance pointed out. “My youngest, she died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Less than a month after it happened, I ended up catching the Dollmaker case. I threw myself into it. I think on some level with each girl I was trying to save Sara. And just like with Sara, I couldn’t. He killed eight girls Sara’s age before I caught him.”

Just then, the hairs on the back of Felicity’s neck prickled into awareness. She heard dress shoes on the pavement behind her.

“Someone’s coming,” she said quietly.

“I got him.”

“False alarm--he’s going to into the diner.” The goosebumps did not abate. “Guys? I think he’s close,” she whispered. “I have this feeling like--”

The man stepped out from a sliver of black shadow and grabbed her from behind. She didn’t even have a chance to scream before he covered her mouth with bruising force and pulled her backwards in a one armed vise hold. Gagging, she fought her first instincts and instead leaned back into him. She dropped everything from her freer hand, held out her thumb like she was hitching, and hooked it backwards in the general direction of his eyes. He was wearing glasses, but it was enough to get his attention. In his grasp, she turned towards his midline, putting the force of his arm at her back. Now she took her elbow, which had a little more room to maneuver, and drove it sideways into his xiphoid process. It bought her a few feet and she stumbled sideways with enough time to gasp and scream properly, like Tippi Hedren level screaming.

The man grabbed her by the soft flesh of her upper arm and threw her towards the ground. Not for the first time, Felicity was grateful for the class that Diggle had pushed her into instead of that shady support group. The breakfall she performed was not exactly textbook, but it got the job done, distributing the force across her shoulders and her palms. The back of her head never even touched the ground.

“Are you alright?” Oliver was very suddenly right above her “Don’t move.”

“I’m fine. Go. Go!”

He went.

“Did you hit your head?” Diggle asked.

“Not even a little.”

“Come on, we gotta get out of here. This place is about to be crawling with cops.”

“Okay. No, wait!”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I’m not leaving this Mermaiden behind. My face feels like a baby’s butt.”

“You are killing me, Smoak.”

“Shut up and hold my bags.”

 

* * *

 

“Something’s going on with this woman. She keeps following you around, helping you out.” Frankly, Felicity liked her already.

“We’ve gotta find her.”

“To stop her? Or to send her a thank-you note?” She was definitely writing Blonde Black Widow a thank you note. She might even spring for a fruit basket.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“What side she’s on.”

“She’s on my side,” Felicity said baldly. “Just for the record.”

“I thought you were morally opposed to murder,” Oliver growled.

Diggle gave her a speaking look and found some guns to clean on the other side of the lair.

“I am.” She tilted her chin up to look Oliver in the eye. “But there is a distinction between killing and murder.”

“Since when?"

“Since Mt. Sinai.”

“You’re religious?” His eyebrows drew together in total, if adorable, confusion.

“That particular commandment has been incorrectly translated by goyim for years as ‘thou shalt not kill’ when in fact it says ‘thou shalt not murder.’”

“Goyim?” His eyebrows flew towards his hairline.

“Yes, goyim. Gentiles. People who never had to learn Hebrew and can’t tell the difference between a He and a Het.”

“You’re Jewish?”

“Am I talking to myself here?” she asked, turning to Diggle. “Can you hear me? Are words coming out of my mouth?”

“No comment,” Diggle said, oiling the gun.

“I took an oath to preserve health and life.” Felicity looked back to Oliver. “But the man that died tonight was a serial stalker, torturer, and murderer of women. That woman in black is not a murderer and neither is your mother.”

Diggle dropped the firing pin he was holding and looked at her in alarm. Felicity ignored him.

“We haven’t talked about it. And I’m sure I’m going to botch this, but we can’t keep not talking about it. Your mother did a lot of things wrong, but she did them to protect you and Thea. And when push came to shove, she saved thousands of lives by speaking up. And she is handling the consequences with grace and fortitude. And I admire that. And I don’t blame her. For any of it.”

Oliver and Diggle just looked at her, not speaking.

“There. I said it. It’s been said. And I have work tomorrow. So now, I’m just going to get my bag and, you know, exit, pursued by a bear. Not a literal bear. It’s Shakespeare. Okay, I’m just going to. Yeah”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which doctors discuss the things that they can't hack and I reveal how much medicine I don't know.

_There is no justice without power and humanitarian compassion is not power._

-Dr. Eric Dachy

 

**Las Vegas, 2005**

“Fetter?” she called, dropping her backpack on the floor and staring at the kitchen table. “What is this?”

“So sad,” he called from his bedroom, “that they stopped teaching reading in American schools.”

“This is an SAT prep book.”

“Very good!” he entered the kitchen with a smile.

“I’m not even sixteen yet.”

Fetter Duvid sighed.

“Fetter.”

“Come and help me start dinner. You do the onions, I’ll do the potatoes.”

This was a traditional division of labor in their home. Felicity preferred chopping and he preferred peeling. They worked in companionable silence for a few minutes until Duvid sighed.

“You are going to college this year,” he said.

“What?” she squeaked, barely missing taking her pinkie off.

“We both know you’re smart enough,” he said. “And you’re more mature than most twenty-somethings. But there’s more.”

“There better be,” she said, pretending that the she was just blinking back onion tears. “There better be more, for you to want to ship me off.”

“At dinner, you and I, we will both have a glass of wine. And I will tell you about your grandparents.”  


**Starling, 2013**

There were new, high caliber guns in town. Felicity had taken one look at the former-person currently-headless-meatpile on the gurney, and her stomach turned itself inside out. She put her hands against the brick wall outside the entrance and puked and puked until she was worried she might actually tear an abdominal muscle.

“Dr. Smoak?”

It was Dr. Kanerva, a surgery attending, crossword fanatic, steady hand, and a true stoic. Fantastic. Felicity held up one finger, waiting until she was definitely done before she stood up, still leaning against the wall, spots in front of her eyes. Dr. Kanerva raised an eyebrow.

“Let’s sit down,” he said, nodded towards an empty smoking bench the requisite number of yards from the entrance and air intake. Felicity sat down heavily.

“Stomach bug?”

“Nope. I just can’t do…” She jerked her thumb towards the ambulance. She had no intention fo saying why.

“GSWs to the head?”

“GSWs and no head.”

“Yeah, that is a rough one.”

“I mean, I can do burns and abscesses and impactions. But I cannot do the missing head.”

“Everybody’s got one,” Dr. Kanerva said. “I can’t do necrotic bowel. If I even suspect it, I have a nurse prepare an extra mask laced with Vicks. Once, in my intern year, I almost vomited in the patient. And I do mean _in_ the patient.”

She couldn’t help but laugh a little. “My intern year, I ended up on the wrong end of a trust fall when my six foot, two hundred pound colleague watched somebody remove a dead toenail. He went down like a tree.”

“It helps if you give it a nickname. I call necrotic bowel ‘rotgut’ to make it sound less disgusting and more intoxicating. That way I can talk about it and not be so embarrassed to ask nurses for Vicks to put in my mask.”

“Is there a good nickname for high-caliber head removal?”

They pondered that for a moment.

“I got it,” Kanerva said. “An Ichabod. You just can’t stand an Ichabod.”

Felicity giggled and then snorted. “That’s genius.”

“I have my moments.” He smiled and rested his hands on his belly. “Do you need a day off?” he asked, mildly. “When was the last time you took one?”

“I have hours to make up.”

“Yeah, rumor is you had a pretty interesting summer.”

“That is one way of putting it.” Felicity stood up, testing her balance and finding it satisfactory.

“Go drink a pop,” Kanerva advised, “a real one with sugar in it. You’ll feel better. Here.” He was holding out a dollar bill, a relatively new one that the machine would actually take.

“Thank you,” she said, really meaning it.

“You’re one of the good ones, Smoak. Don’t let one Ichabod run you off.”

Felicity nodded and took herself to the lounge. It was past dinner, but before the bars closed, during a brief lull before the rush that always preceded the change to swing shift. There were two interns, who looked impossibly young even though they were about her age. Probably just new to Starling, then, and definitely new to the Glades.

“It looks like just measles,” said Intern A.

“Deffo,” said Intern B.

“High fever, rash, a population with low vaccination rates. Kid has measles.”

“Deffo.”

“Or not,” Felicity said, expertly feeding the bill into the machine and selecting a Coke.

“What?” said Intern B.

“What else goes along with crushing poverty, lack of preventive medical care, and no city services.”

The Interns looked at each other.

“Where are you even from?” she asked, popping the top on her soda.

“Midway,” they said together.

“Right. So: poverty, no preventive care, no city services.”

The interns looked at each other.

“Don’t they have rats in Midway?”

The interns looked at her.

“It’s Haverhill. Epidemic arthritic erythema. Listen, a lot of unsavory things live side by side here. A lot of diseases in the same place at the same time. You have to know which one--”  Felicity stopped and stared at the soda in her hands. “Holy shit. Ho-lee shit.” She grabbed the soda and bolted for what she considered to be ‘her’ stairwell.

“That girl ain’t right,” said Intern A.

“Deffo.”

It took about fifteen minutes, but eventually she did get Oliver on the phone.

“Felicity?” he said and she could tell that he was clenching his jaw tight enough to grind his teeth.

“Oliver, listen, I--”

“Imagine my surprise to discover, in the middle of a black tie benefit at my own home, to hear from my staff that not only do I know a Dr. Veronica Echolls, but also that she has urgent test results for me.”

“Oliver.”

“Urgent test results, which need to delivered.”

“It’s not you!” she yelled.

“Of course it’s not me! It’s not even you!” he yelled back, presumably referring to the fictional Dr. Echolls. Hopefully he was in the kitchen or something.

“It’s rat-bite fever, Oliver! She’s not following you!”

“What?” His voice dropped.

“Every time your friend in black showed up, we thought it was measles, but someone else was there.”

“Laurel.”

“Rat. Bite. Fever.”

Oliver hung up the phone. Felicity checked her watch. One hour until she was free to bike over to the lair. How many more interns could she impress in sixty minutes?

Felicity arrived at Verdant feeling a little light and light-headed. There was another Coke in her bag, though, so she figured she could keep going for a while. It was a good thing she brought an extra because she was going to need the blood sugar when she got properly gobsmacked: Sara fucking Lance.

 

* * *

 

It was amazing the way her body could feel the echo of a gunshot before she heard it. It had to be some kind of psychosomatic symptom, but she would have sworn on her life that she felt it first. There were a lot of gunshots and they were all coming from the direction of Oliver’s gun buyback event. No one had to tell the Glades Memorial staff that there was about to be trouble. Everyone knew what to do, and now that there was actual medicine and gowns and tools to do it with, it didn’t seem like such a despair-inducing disaster. Just a Wednesday.

“Please no Ichabods,” she whispered, as she joined the quiet group near the ambulance bay.

“Don’t worry,” said Intern A, appearing from nowhere. “We’ll take the Ichabods.”

Intern B nodded.

Crap. Was she going to have to learn their real names? Already, they heard sirens. Behind her, someone with a special sense of humor was whistling _Flight of Valkyries_. One by one, the ambulances began to arrive and the doctors waited for a patient and then accompanied them inside. Lots of GSWs. Felicity was brimming with adrenaline, bouncing on the balls of her feet, waiting her turn with something like excitement.

Until she saw two EMTs pulling Sin out of the back of an ambulance. Felicity elbowed her way past another resident in front of her to get to her friend. Roy was right behind the EMTs who were rattling off Sin’s vitals. Felicity made a note of all of these and turned to a nurse as she jogged alongside the gurney into a trauma room.

“Type and crossmatch and call the OR,” she said to a nurse, impressed by the evenness of her own voice. Another nurse was already cutting Sin’s clothes off of her. She was going to be so pissed, when she woke up. If. “GSW to the right upper quadrant. Abdomen’s distended. No exit wound.”

“That’s a lot of blood,” said Intern A behind her.

“Prep a FAST for me. I want a CBC and blood gas. Now!” Intern A returned with the ultrasound. Felicity turned it on and there it was--the black stripe. “That’s a positive hemoperitoneum. Page Kanerva. She’s bleeding into her belly. Shit!”

After that, it was mostly just ordering lots of tests and hanging lots of blood and doing everything she could do to improve Sin’s chances during surgery. By the time Felicity had seen her into the elevator and up to the OR, she was reasonably certain that Sin could live through the surgery. A little shaky with the adrenaline letdown, Felicity pulled off her gown and gloves and packed them into a ball. She felt strangely separate from all that blood, after the fact.

“Doc?” it was Roy, looking stricken and pale.

“Hey,” Felicity said gently. She looked down at the bloody mess in her hands and quickly stuffed it into the nearest hazmat bin.

“Is she dead?”

“No, no, she’s in surgery right now.”

“You’re not going with her?”

“I’m not a surgeon, but I know the man operating on her and he’s good.”

“Oh.” He stumbled slightly.

“Let’s sit down, okay?” Felicity steered him towards a plastic bench and he fell onto it. “Put your head down. Are you here alone?” she asked, rubbing circles on his back with her palm as he leaned forward.

“Thea’s here somewhere.” His voice was muffled. “There was a lot of blood.”

“You did really good, Roy. You saved her life. She wouldn’t have made it this far.”

“I saw her the other day,” he whispered. “Sin. She was with the other vigilante. I don’t know how to get word to her, the woman in black. She’d want to know, I think.”

“Um,” Felicity prevaricated. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Oh no,” said a female voice behind them. Thea was there, looking very put together for a girl who’d survived a hail of gunfire. “Did he pass out?”

“No,” Roy said, head still down.

“More like a swoon,” Felicity said, vacating her seat for Thea. “He probably needs something to eat.”

“I got it covered.” Thea produced a bag of peanut M&Ms from her purse. “You want?”

“No, thanks. But you should make him eat some. And drink some water, if you can.”

“Will do. Thanks, Felicity.”

“You’re welcome, Thea.”

Hours later, at the end of her slammed shift, Felicity headed to Sin’s room one last time, just to check. She breathed a very heavy sigh of relief to see that not only was Sin awake, she was talking to Roy and Thea. Felicity wavered, but decided not to interrupt them, ducking her head and heading for the staff door. Which is where she saw Oliver holding hands with a blonde woman in a black jacket and ballcap, walking away from her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which awkward conversations are had.

_The art of medicine has its roots in the heart._

-Paracelsus

 

**Las Vegas, 2005**

Their soup sat in front of them, cooling. Felicity eyed her half-full wineglass nervously.

“It is alright, you can drink.”

“It feels like a trap,” she admitted.

“No strings, no iocaine powder.”

“Fetter!” she grinned broadly. “You made a _Princess Bride_ joke!”

“You see? I am always paying attention to your movies.”

Felicity snorted and drank.

“I am always paying attention to you,” Fetter Duvid said.

She set the wineglass down and looked up at him through her wire framed glasses.

“And there are times when you look so much like Dine.”

“You think I look like mom?” Felicity asked, her face suddenly hot.

“When you are happy or excited, you are the very image of her. It’s okay, hinteleh, you can cry.”

“Okay,” Felicity said.

“Your mother was the best thing that ever happened to our family. She was so sunny, even as a baby, you know. I am sorry that I did not get to meet you when you were a baby, because I suspect you were just as happy. Knowing you even as short a time as I have, you have brought me such naches. I would have been totally ruined by knowing you as a child.”

“I was very fat.” Felicity wiped her eyes and cheeks and drank a little more.

“Fat babies are the most precious, everyone knows this.”

“Why, um, why didn’t you know me? Before a few years ago?”

“That, uh, that brings us to your grandparents. What do you know about them?”

“Nothing. Mom always said they were dead.”

“They are. Now. But your grandmother was alive when you were born.”

“I don’t understand. I never met her.”

“You know our family came from Russia, after a pogrom, and when we came to New York we had nothing. We went to work for some unpleasant people, and we moved to Nevada to keep doing that work. Your grandfather and his father, in particular, did some very unpleasant things. Your mother left us when she was in high school. And so when my father died with debts owing to these unpleasant people, there was no one else to pay them.”

“So you did?”

“Felicity.” He scrubbed his hand down his face. “I am not done paying.”

  


**Starling, 2013**

She met John at the secret Verdant entrance, straight off her shift and wearing her street clothes: jeans and a black hoodie that read: IT’S NEVER LUPUS. Her hair was up in a messy bun that showed off her undercut and almost-healed scar, being slowly reclaimed by peach fuzz, recently dyed blonde to match.

“You look tired,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I’m going to stay tired until the end of residency. So you might as well quit commenting on it.”

“You sleeping at all, in that new apartment?” he asked, totally ignoring her per usual.

“And how’s your love life these days?” she retorted.

“Fine. We won’t talk about it. You ready for this?”  He nodded at the door.

“Absolutely. I kind of already like her.”

“Well alright then. Let’s go.”

By unspoken agreement, they moved silently down the stairs, ears wide open.

“I remember the first time I saw this hood,” Sara said. “Shado was wearing it. This is quite the set-up that you got here, where you’re launching your one man war for Starling.”

“I’m not one man. These are my friends.  This is John Diggle and Felicity Smoak. Guys, this is Sara.”

“Welcome home, Sara,” Diggle said warmly.

“Hi,” Felicity said. “I saw you at the hospital, before. I’m Sin’s friend. You’re Sin’s friend, too, obviously, I know that. Thank you for keeping an eye out for her. I worry about her, you know. She looks really tough, but she’s secretly kind of sweet.”

“You’re sweet.”

Somehow it wasn’t condescending, coming from Sara. It was just a statement of fact. The next thing Felicity knew, she had a handful of dirt under a microscope, listening with one ear while Sara, in that same matter-of-fact-way explained that she was a member of the League of Assassins which was, yes, exactly what it said on the tin.

“They remade me into what I am,” Sara said. “And I swore them my allegiance.”

“Why are they kicking down doors trying to find you now?” Diggle asked.

“Because I left. And there’s only one way that you leave the League.”

A cold sweat prickled along Felicity’s scalp. _I am not done paying_ , said Fetter Duvid in her memory. _Your mother’s name wasn’t always called Donna_.

“Felicity, I need you to find this al-Owal.”

“What?” she asked, jumping slightly and knocking some dirt off the slide.

“Find al-Owal.”

“Yeah, of course.” She turned back to the microscope and zoomed in, literally and mentally, on what she knew how to do.

“I’m sorry if I upset you before,” Sara said quietly beside her.

“We all end up in places we wish we weren’t. Like Internal Medicine.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?” she looked up from her test tube.

“Not making me feel like what I am.” Sara sounded so sad that Felicity almost wanted to hug her, which seemed like a dangerous proposition.

“What you are is Oliver’s friend,’ she said firmly. “Which makes you my friend and Diggle’s friend. That’s what you are. Our friend.”

 

* * *

 

When Oliver and Sara returned from their first run at al-Owal, and Sara began to strip off her top, wincing as it pulled at her cut, Felicity realized the boys hadn’t so much as turned their backs.

“A little privacy!” she said.

“But we used to--”

“Oliver, do not finish that sentence,” Felicity said primly. Behind her, Sara snorted. “I said scoot!”

The boys stepped away a little distance and turned their backs.

“Honestly,” Felicity huffed, helping Sarah with the black leather and then the bra. There were a lot of scars and none of them had healed well.

“I really don’t mind,” Sara said.

“I do. And I’m the doctor, so.” Felicity pulled on her gloves and grabbed a dose of EMLA and a suture kit. “A little stick and then it’ll be numb.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You don’t want it?”

“Pain and I came to an understanding a few years back.”

“Even Oliver lets me numb it sometimes, for pity’s sake.” Felicity sighed and began stitching. “I want to ask you something, but I don’t want to offend you. And because I’m me, I can’t figure out how to do without offending you.”

“I’m not that delicate.”

“Okay.” Felicity steeled herself. “I did a plastics rotation. I have good hands. If you want me to excise some of this scar tissue, I absolutely can. The boys never need to know, if you don’t want.”

“Felicity?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a really long time.”

Felicity swallowed past a sudden lump in her throat and finished her work. She put a dressing on--it was an awkward spot, between the shoulder blades--and helped Sara into a t-shirt.

“Done,” Felicity announced, and the boys turned back around from their whispered conference.

“We need to protect the Lances,” Oliver said. “I’ll take Laurel.”

 _Yeah, I’ll bet you will_. Felicity put a hand over her mouth to physically stop the thought from exiting.

“What can I do?”

“Nothing. You’re hurt and you need to stay here.”

“What about my father?”

“I’ll go talk to Detective Lance,” Felicity said. “I have to be at work in an hour anyway.”

“Tell him he needs to get out of town for a couple of days.”

“Please don’t tell him about me,” Sara pleaded.

“Don’t worry,” Felicity smiled reassuringly. “It’s all covered by doctor-patient confidentiality. Just ask the boys.”

 

* * *

 

Felicity was walking her bike about half a block behind Lance when he left the message for Laurel. Thanks to several running alerts and scans, Felicity knew about the DUI, just like she knew about all of Oliver’s previously documented...foibles. And Sin’s. And Roy’s. And Sara’s. Honestly, it was a surprise that she, Felicity, was the goody-two-shoes in any crowd, but apparently she’d fallen into a kind of vigilante rogue’s gallery.

“Detective Lance!” she called, as soon as he hung up the phone. “Wait up!”

“Dr. Smoak,” he said.

“I totally pinged your cell phone and timed my arrival to meet you here. Sorry.”

“Well that’s...refreshingly honest. Since when did you start making house calls?”

“You have no idea,” she muttered. “Listen, I’m not here tonight as a doctor, but as a...friend. I guess.”

“Don’t sound so excited.”

“I don’t make friends with that many cops. Any cops, actually. Just you.”

“Very sweet. Is this going somewhere?”

“Yeah, it is. You’re in danger.”

“Listen, I’m in danger every time I put on this uniform. So you’re gonna have to be a little more specific.”

“It’s the kind of danger that makes our mutual friend nervous.”

“Okay, I’ll bite.”

“There’s a group of organized murderers, like a...team. Of them. And they’re coming for you.”

“A team of organized murderers? Like the mob?”

“Worse than the mob.”

“I doubt that.”

“Malcolm Merlyn was apparently a member. That should give you some sort of idea about the type of people we’re dealing with”

“And what did I do to piss them off?”

“I can’t really say. Because of, um, doctor-patient confidentiality. But you’re not safe here.” She tried to put her full physician authority behind the words.

“Smoak, nobody’s safe, okay? Especially not us cops. We get shot at for a living. And my shift? It just ended.”

“Detective Lance!” she called, exasperated. She couldn’t make him leave town or even stop walking away from her, short of knocking him over the head, which was unethical, plus she figured he was probably pretty good at defending himself.

“Goodnight!”

“Seriously?” she yelled.

“Goodnight, Dr. Smoak.”

Cursing repeatedly to herself, Felicity pulled out her Hood phone and texted the Oliver to let him know she’d struck out. Apparently, Doctor Voice only worked inside the hospital. Or maybe it was because she wasn’t in scrubs yet. Or because she was short and blonde. Whatever it was, it was exhausting not being listened to. She got enough of that at work.

Felicity swung her leg over her bike frame, only a little awkwardly, and pushed off in the direction of Glades Memorial. She tried very, very hard not to think about what it would be like to have a father.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabel Rochev and a pile of luggage was waiting for them at the plane and Felicity was the first to spot her.
> 
> “Oh no. Ice Bitch Business Barbie.”

_ One of the first essentials in securing a good-natured equanimity is not to expect too much of the people amongst whom you dwell. _

-Dr. William Osler

 

**Cambridge, 2006**

Felicity sat down on her crappy dorm mattress. There was a foam topper somewhere in the sea of Target bags at her feet. It was possible she and Fetter had gone a little overboard. But her roommate wasn’t due in until tomorrow, so there was no rush to make the place habitable for anyone else.

The room just felt so empty. Wasn’t college supposed to be fun? Where was the gang of well-groomed nerds to take her to play frisbee on the quad? Wasn’t this whole thing supposed to come with built in friends? It always seemed to work out that way on TV. For a few moments, she contemplated running back down the stairs and out into the shady little road and chasing down Fetter Duvid’s car and begging him to just take her with him.

But that was against the rules. They had driven all the way from Vegas and he had taken the time to explain the rules and what the rules were for and made sure she understood them all. No visiting New York or New Jersey. No going to temple except for Hillel. No trying to contact him. No trying to find him. No boys with anything pierced. No boys who were rude to waiters or to their mother. And absolutely no changing her mind and majoring in Philosophy, Art, or Underwater Basket Weaving. In the hallway, a group of boys went by chanting something about their testicles.

She let her head fall back against the wall and resolved then and there to graduate as fast as possible, because she had a feeling that TV had lied about everything and college was going to be intolerable.

 

**Starling, 2015**

Felicity almost missed the plane. Mostly because she almost didn’t decide to leave her apartment. She sat on the edge of her new mattress, in jeans and a peacoat, staring at her packed bag until five minutes after the firm drop dead time Diggle had given her. Then she dry swallowed two klonopin, picked up the phone, and called him.

“Woman,” he answered the phone, “you have to got to be kidding me.”

“I’m going,” she said.

“If you are not out in front of your place in ninety seconds, I will not even slow down when we roll by.”

She was out in front in 89 seconds. Beneath her sensible blue turtleneck, the small, golden Star of David that Fetter had given her so long ago warmed against her skin. This trip was against all their rules and every remaining milileter of her common sense.  _ Please, please, please, don’t let this be the wrong thing _ .

Isabel Rochev and a pile of luggage was waiting for them at the plane and Felicity was the first to spot her.

“Oh no. Ice Bitch Business Barbie.”

“Oliver,” Digg growled.

“I will handle this,” Oliver said, and slid out of the vehicle.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Isabel asked with all the humility of a Tsarina.

“Moscow,” Oliver said, buttoning his suit jacket in a very CEO way.

“What kind of partner decides to interact with our overseas holdings behind the other one’s back?”

“It was an oversight,” he said smoothly.

“Well, lucky for our partnership, I’m a fast packer.” With that, Isabel headed for the Gulfstream.

“Oliver,” Felicity hissed. “If you make me share that plane with her, I will not be held responsible for my actions.”

“Her tagging along does not help matters any,” John added.

“I will take care of her,” Oliver said to both of them. “John, We’re going to bring Lyla back, wherever she is. Felicity, you can stay or you can go but this plane is leaving now.”

“This dirty shiksa,” she muttered. “Ikh vintsh ir di drite make fun mitsraim.” Then she took a deep breath and boarded the plane. Trying to avoid Isabel, she took the seat facing Oliver. If nothing else, she could glare at him across the Atlantic. Felicity tucked her message bag underneath her seat and watched Isabel expertly swallow two Ambien and follow them with a tiny vodka. This must be why the rich traveled so much. They could afford to do it totally zonked out of their gourds.

Digg, still visible pissed, took the lone seat at the back of the plane. They had intended to use the flight for strategizing and planning, but that was clearly out. Even if Isabel knocked herself totally unconscious, it was too big a risk to take that she would wake up hear them talking about their night work. Oliver was gazing out the window at the tarmac, still with his CEO face on. She couldn’t even glare properly. As the engines powered up, she could feel her own sedative start to kick in, so she closed her eyes and let the noise lull her into a doze. She hadn’t slept at all the night before and it was a relief to drop off.

It was not a relief to wake up covered in sweat, with Oliver gripping her hands. Her throat hurt. Had she screamed? No, no, she didn’t think she had screamed. She was just having trouble breathing. Because the plane was shaking. It was shaking underneath her hands and her feet and it was very dark under the city or maybe her vision was just tunneling out.

“Felicity Smoak,” Oliver said, directly into her ear. “It is just turbulence. You are having a nightmare.”

“Mmm,” she said, looking up and into his eyes.

“Look directly at me and take a breath.” His voice was quiet, but firm.

The breath would not be had.

“Felicity, we are on a plane and we are not alone on the plane. This is just turbulence. The pilot is ascending to avoid it.”

She nodded. Logically, she knew this was all true. The front of her brain knew he was giving her real, hard facts. But the back of her brain, the vestigial lizard part, was losing its shit.

“This will be over soon,” he said calmly. “The pilot is ascending. I’m going to keep talking to you. Do you have medication for this?”

She nodded.

“Is it in your bag?”

She nodded.

“I’m going to let go of your hands and get it out.” He reached under her seat and pulled out her much battered Timbuk2. “Let’s see…watermelon bubblegum,  _ Outlander  _ in paperback, a couple chargers, a box of Orgain bars, and here we go, Xanax. Two?”

She nodded. Apparently that was her entire repertoire now.

“See, look, the turbulence is over.” He shook out two pills. “Open up.”

She shook her head.

“Felicity, your hands are still shaking pretty hard. Make this easy on me, okay, and open up.”

Flushed hot with embarrassment, Felicity opened her mouth. Oliver set two pills inside her mouth, brushing her lower lip softly with his calloused thumb. It would be so much more appealing if she weren’t in the middle of coming completely unglued. Her eyes prickled and suddenly there was a real danger that she would start crying. Then she would just have to die.

“Perfect. See? This is a walk in the park. I bet you already feel better. Right? Blink once for yes, twice for definitely.”

Felicity nodded.

“Perfect,” he said again, smiling. Oliver reached into his armrest, pulled out a mini water bottle and twisted the top off “Two hands.”

With a great deal of concentration and yes, both hands, she was able to drink and spill only a few tablespoons on her sweater. She exhaled, very slowly, through pursed lips, and leaned out into the aisle to double-check that Business Barbie was still passed out. Thanks be to Ambien.

“Are you okay?” Oliver asked, like he hadn’t watched her meltdown right in front of him.

“Yeah. Just a dream,” she lied through her teeth.

“Do you have a lot of dreams like that?”

“No.” Lying was easy and fun.

“Maybe just since this spring?”

“No.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“Am not.”

He smiled and she breathed.

 

* * *

 

She was not feeling so fondly towards him when he and Diggle ditched her at the airport. The ride to the hotel could best be described as frosty.  Isabel began spritzing herself aggressively with some kind of fancy rosewater, presumably to offset the drying effects of airplane air and high altitude drinking. Felicity was perfectly happy to sit in silence, so of course Isabel tried to talk to her.

“You seem awfully young to be a doctor.”

“I was sixteen when I started college.”

“A prodigy. How’d that turn out for you?”

“Well...here I am.”

“Yes, Oliver Queen’s carry-on.”

“Better than being his baggage.”  _ Oh no, no, no. Take it back, mouth. Take it back. _

“What are you doing here, Dr. Smoak?” Isabel’s voice dripped with poison.

“Oliver offered me a seat on the plane, because he knows my cousin lives here,” she improvised. “She’s in a bad relationship. I get to see Russia and she gets a free flight home.”

“And how did he meet you?”

“That’s between me and Oliver.”

“I’ll bet it is.”

“Oh, look, the hotel.”

Isabel made a point of speaking Russian to the bellhops, giving what sounded like elaborate instructions about her luggage and its conveyance to her room. Felicity hauled her own duffel over her shoulder and schlepped behind her. No one rushed to help her and the man at the front desk didn’t even make eye contact while he checked her in.

So much the better.

Once in her room, Felicity quickly changed out of her clothes. She washed her face and brushed her teeth and pushed her jet lag to the back of her mind. Next: leggings, long sleeve shirt, ankle-length wool skirt, and tichel. It was much, much easier to dress frum when it was below zero. Examining herself in the mirror, funky haircut and everything else covered, she looked like a stranger to herself. Alternative Felicity. With a deep breath, she pulled on her peacoat, scarf, and boots and headed for the true center of her people’s intelligence operations: the nearest Chabad house.

Three hours later, she stumbled back to the hotel absolutely full to the brim with kosher food and drink. She had also given out various fake numbers to various dinner guests related to various eligible bachelors. There was little hope that this would actually stop them. She was a single Jewish woman with an American passport and she’d be sleeping with one eye open for the foreseeable future. 

It was worth it, though, because she had a name: Dmitry Sokolov. There were probably a thousand men by that name, but she only needed one. As soon as the door was shut behind her, she kicked off her clothes and stepped into the shower. She only fell asleep standing up for like a half a minute, but still remembered to wash her hair. It would be frizzy as hell in the morning, but worth it not to smell like airplane anymore. Before she turned the light out, she ran a single program, courtesy of Oracle, on her encrypted tablet. It was designed to do one thing and one thing only. The screen prompted her to enter a name and she did: Dmitry Sokolov.

 

* * *

 

“You have a secret wife?” she asked, trying not to actually shriek. “Oh frak--I’ve been living with you--not living living--but you have a secret ARGUS agent wife? She’s going to kill me.”

“Ex-wife,” Diggle said. “And she knows you crashed with me for a while.”

“How am I not dead in a ditch already?” She covered her eyes with her hands.

“Ex,” he repeated. “Ex-wife.” 

“It’s cute that you think that matters. I don’t even have a will.”

Oliver’s phone buzzed. “Two minute warning,” he said. “Good luck, John.”

Felicity stopped wringing her hands long enough to throw her arms around John. She had to jump a little to do it and he still had to lift her a little so she could kiss his cheek. 

“Hey,” she whispered in his ear. “Pay attention to your cellmate. Don’t tell Oliver.”

Diggle set her down, giving her a strange look.

“Oh, and if Isabel asks, your wife’s name is Lyla Denisovich and also she’s my cousin, she’s been in a bad relationship, and Oliver brought me along so that we could take her away from her toxic boyfriend and back to the States.”

Oliver looked at her and blinked. Diggle sighed.

“I’m going to go get arrested now. Please don’t concoct any more cover stories without me.”

 

* * *

 

Oliver Queen should not be allowed to wink, period, end of. It was indecent. It made all her parts warm. She was still thinking about it, hours later, when she knocked on the door of his hotel room and the Ice Bitch slunk out with mussed hair and pair of stilettos dangling from her fingers.

“I think he’s played doctor enough for one night,” Isabel said. “Don’t you?” And then she was gone in a cloud of sex and French perfume.

Felicity just stared at him, agape.

“Felicity.”

“Are. You. Shitting. Me?”

“Felicity, I--”

“Oh, no. Not in the hallway. We will talk about this in the tank.”

“It’s not a tank, it’s an MRAP.”

“I said,” she bit off, “in the tank.”

Felicity maintained stony silence, mostly by default, since she could not think of a single thing to say that didn’t end with her stranded at Sheremetyevo, panhandling for a coach ticket on Spirit Airlines. She bided her time until they were alone in the monstrous, overgrown toy of a vehicle.

“I hope you’ve had all your shots,” she said flatly.

“So we’re--”

“Do you have any idea how many letters I wrote that woman? Hundreds. As soon as I was off enough drugs to dictate letters to Digg. I pleaded with her to reopen the clinic. I begged her, Oliver. She didn’t reply to any of them. Not a single one. She doesn’t care about poor people. She doesn’t care about anyone. I’d say she had a lump of coal where her heart should be, but that would imply that any carbon based organ had ever resided in that spot.”

That was when Anatoly got back in, and Felicity went to the back of the tank to get her medical kit ready. Lyla wasn’t in bad shape, all things considered. A little battered, malnourished, maybe, but nothing immediately life-threatening. Then she went to check over John, who was a little more battered and a lot colder.

“Digg,” Felicity whispered, as she applied a butterfly bandage. “Who was the man in your cell?”

“Political prisoner. He gave a speech Putin didn’t like. Tried to keep me out of trouble.”

“And he was okay?”

“Well. He was in a gulag. But relatively”

“Right, of course.” Felicity smiled in the semi-darkness. She turned back to Lyla. “John’s temperature is below optimal. I think some cuddling is in order. For medical purposes.”

Diggle scoffed.

“John,” Lyla said, elbowing him gently. “She is a doctor.”

 

* * *

 

John and Lyla left the airfield together and Isabel got into her own car. Oliver offered to drive Felicity home in his Cayenne and since the only other option was hoofing it, she accepted. She had not made the mistake of falling asleep on the plane again, so it was probably inevitable that she dozed off in the passenger seat. Rich people travel was too comfortable. Oliver woke her outside her apartment building with a gentle squeeze of her hand.

“We’re here,” he said.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Are we working tonight?”

“Felicity.”

“I’m going to take that as a yes.”

“It just kind of happened,” Oliver said. “It didn’t mean anything.”

“I’m sure it didn’t.” She reached for the door handle.

“Hey,” he said. “Because of the life that I lead, I just think it’s better to not...be with someone I could really care about.”

“Well, I think...I think that sounds like bullshit.” She climbed out of the car and grabbed her bags. “Thanks for the lift, Oliver.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity realized something was very wrong around the time that Leone, one of the orderlies, knocked over a tray full of instruments, sending them plummeting to the floor. Felicity didn’t jump or startle or blink. She laughed-- laughed . That was when it occurred to her that her head felt maybe a little disconnected from her body and that she was hotter than she should be, but more like she was glowing inside, and it was radiating out of her like light, in both wave and particle form.
> 
> Oh shit. She was stoned. She was so stoned. Super-duper stoned. And for the first time in months, nothing hurt. Not her ankle, not her arm, absolutely nothing. It scared the crap out of her.

_ Here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail. _

-Thomas de Quincey,  _ Confessions of an English Opium-Eater _

 

**Starling, 2013**

Felicity realized something was very wrong around the time that Leone, one of the orderlies, knocked over a tray full of instruments, sending them plummeting to the floor. Felicity didn’t jump or startle or blink. She laughed-- _ laughed _ . That was when it occurred to her that her head felt maybe a little disconnected from her body and that she was hotter than she should be, but more like she was glowing inside, and it was radiating out of her like light, in both wave and particle form.

Oh shit. She was stoned. She was so stoned. Super-duper stoned. And for the first time in months, nothing hurt. Not her ankle, not her arm, absolutely nothing. It scared the crap out of her.

“I gotta go,” she said to Leone, the glowing turned into more of a sticky sweat. Felicity stopped only long enough to let someone in charge know that she had the flu. By that time, she was starting to look it, too, even if she still felt like she was walking on cloud nine. Her colleagues practically chased her out on a cloud of Purell.

She didn’t trust herself to balance on her bike, so she walked it--very carefully--in the direction of Verdant. One hand on handlebars, the other out for balance, she felt like she was on the rolling deck of some kind of boat. If that boat smelled like the Glades.

“Don’t fall down,” she whispered. “Don’t fall down. Walk your feet. Walk your feet.”

It took the total-body concentration of a drunk freshman, but she got Verdant’s side door open, the bike inside, and finally herself. The bike clattered to the cement floor and Felicity only avoided following it by lurching towards the handrail of the stairs. She sat down on them and, still hanging onto the railing, butt-scooted to the bottom. 

“Okay, okay. Good work. We’re doing great. Meclizine. We need meclizine.” This time, when she tried to stand, she did go all the way down. “Shit. Okay. Not great.” Giving in, she reached into her back pocket for her phone, only now realizing that she’d started to shake, too hard to actually dial numbers. “Siri,” she said, “call John.”

“Calling John,” Siri chirped.

“Felicity?” There was a lot of background noise, mostly press, it sounded like. They were shouting very rude questions about Moira.

“When you’re done at court, could you swing by the club?” Her voice was shaking, too, and her stomach was starting to cramp. Her ponytail was soaked through with sweat. This was not good.

“What? I can’t hear you.” The reporters were deafening.

“I need help!” she admitted, and there was a fumbling noise at the other end of the line.

“Do you have a situation?” Oliver asked calmly.

“Yes,” Felicity gasped. “I’m at the foundry. I have a situation. Send John.”

“I will. Hang on.”

 

* * *

 

“Okay, sweetie,” Diggle said. “I’m going to pick you up and put you on the bed now.”

“Sweetie?” she mumbled. “Really?”

“Not now, Smoak. Although I’m glad you’re talking sense again.” He wrapped her in an extremely fluffy blanket around her. It felt like her No Coffee, No Talkie blanket, which made her smile.

“You still with me?”

“Yeah, yeah. I need you to start an IV.” She hugged her elbows tighter, against the shaking and the ache that seemed to come from inside her bones. “I feel like I’m dying. I’m not, don’t worry. But I feel like it.”

“Anti-virals?”

“Saline. Meclizine. Clonidine.”

“Diggle? Felicity?” Expensive leather shoes tip-tapped all the way down the stairs.

“Oliver? Why is Oliver here?”

“I heard you passed out.” His face appeared in her line of sight, and it was half CEO, half real Oliver, and all concern.

“I told Digg not to call you.”

“Yeah,” Digg said. “But before that, you said ‘Nobody likes a blonde in a Hamster ball,’ so I went ahead and called him.”

“You look like you need medical attention,” Oliver said and he put the back of his hand against her cheek. It was rough and warm and she missed it when he took it away.

“I am medical attention,” she mumbled. “There’s nothing they can do in a hospital that Digg can’t do here.”

“Is that true?” Oliver asked.

“Probably, plus…” Diggle trailed off and she knew the boys were sharing a look.

“Plus what?” Oliver asked.

“Plus,” Felicity said, “medical residents do not use drugs because they want to be doctors, so they can’t go into withdrawal because they want to be doctors. Officially, this isn’t happening, because I want to be a doctor.”

“You’re in withdrawal?” Oliver asked, clearly alarmed. “Is it the painkillers, or--”

“No,” Digg said quickly, pushing Felicity back onto the bed as she tried to rise in protest. “It’s worse than that.”

“Speak for yourself,” she muttered. “It’s Vertigo. Which, unlike certain herbal remedies, I have never tried in my life.”

“Vertigo’s in play again?”

“I’ve watched it poison people for more than a year,” she said, gritting her teeth against another muscle cramp. Trust me. Digg, I’m ready for that IV now.“

“Okay. Oliver, can you hold her arm steady?”

“Of course.”

Oh good. He was touching her again. She held her arm out and was surprised by how much pressure he had to exert to keep it steady against the mattress of their small gurney.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

“You’re not,” she said. “I’ll feel much better once the clonidine is on board. Don’t look so worried. This is a problem with a solution.”

“What about the Count?” Oliver asked.

“He made his escape at the same time as the Dollmaker,” Diggle said and Felicity felt a pinch and then a trickle of cold in the crook of her elbow.

“Let me guess, Iron Heights worked overtime to keep it covered up.” Oliver sounded disgusted.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Felicity opened her eyes to look at him.

“No, you don’t,” he said, pushing a damp strand of hair away from her face. “I made a choice not to put an arrow in this guy. And it was the right choice. No more killing.”

“Here,” Diggle handed him something that looked like an overgrown tranquilizer dart.

“I worked this up to counteract the effects of vertigo. I’m sure Diggle can put it in a hypodermic.”

“No no no,” she said, giddy at the prospect of relief. Groaning, Felicity rolled onto her belly, lifting up the blanket to expose her scrubs-clad behind. “Oliver, just put it in me.”

Diggle choked.

“I….” Oliver trailed off. “I need to get back to court.”

“I’ll handle this,” Digg said, sounding a little strained.

“I wish someone would,” she muttered.

 

* * *

 

“How are you feeling?” Oliver asked, having reappeared during a recess.

“I’m great. Look, I’m sitting up and everything.” She was sitting up and, thanks to modern medicine, she was feeling a little less like the angel of death was coming for her, personally.

“You are a terrible liar.”

“Am not. I can close my eyes and touch my nose.”

“No you can’t,” Diggle said. “The antidote didn’t work. He must be altering the formula.”

“Clonidine on the other hand, still works great.” Felicity gave a thumbs up and tried drinking her gatorade through the straw with mixed success.

“I saw what happened at court, with Donner and Thea. How is she?”

“We’ll be fine.”

“You’re not much better at lying than Felicity.”

And then there was Count Vertigo, with a solution in search of a problem. Her problem. Felicity watched in horror and, yes, in sudden consuming greed for the contents of those syringes. This was the worst. She felt like someone else was running her brain, her life. It wasn’t until Oliver laid his hand on her that she realized she was scratching at her own arms. When the Count depressed the plungers, she actually gasped. It was minutes later when she realized she was still staring at the freeze frame.

“Let me call someone for you,” Oliver said gently.

“There’s no one to call,” Felicity replied. “I don’t want Sin or Roy to see me like this. I’d rather be here. Safe.” 

“What is that?” Diggle asked. “In his eye.”

“Um,” Felicity shook her head. “Ctrl and plus to zoom in.”

“Wings?” Oliver asked.

“The city seal,” Felicity said. “I think that’s the records department.”

 

* * *

 

Diggle exhaled a noise of pure frustration.

“No luck?” She rubbed her eyes, trying not to think about how disgusting and needy she felt.

“I have no idea how he got the vertigo into you. Nobody eats in the same place, shops in the same place.”

“The Ghost Map,” Felicity said.

“Is your fever spiking again?” 

“You know nothing, John Snow,” she said, experiencing a rush of very welcome adrenaline.

“Please start talking sense.”

“Pull up that map of the city. In the hot summer of 1854, London experienced a major cholera outbreak. Germ theory hadn’t even been formally articulated, but one doctor believed that cholera came from contaminated water. He found every cholera case and marked it on a map. Then he traced each household’s path to the well nearest to them. And that’s how they found out the Broad Street Pump.”

“We’re looking for the pump,” Diggle said.

“Exactly. Okay, so, where do all these people live?”

“I think I can run your algorithm to show us the addresses.”

“It’s not mine. It’s Oracle’s.”

“Felicity, you don’t get as far in Special Forces as I did without some kind of tech training. I can see your fingerprints on this.”

“It’s her framework--”

“Felicity. We talked about this.”

“Right, okay. It should populate a map of the city with reported cases. Except...I know I’m not firing on all cylinders, but do you see a pattern?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay, so...home isn’t the pump. Where else do people go?”

“Besides home? Work?”

“Yes!” Felicity said. “Work! Okay, use that toggle thing on the right to sort by employer.”

“Look at that. It’s a trail,” he said, pleased. “Anywhere you’ve been?”

“That spot, right there, that’s Glades Memorial. No, I’m wrong, it’s the empty lot next door. Oh no.”

“What?”

“They hired a truck to come out and administer all our flu shots, before the start of the season. They’re required for work.  I can’t believe they hooked me in one dose.”

“I saw it with heroin, in Afghanistan. All the time.”

“Where’s the truck now?”

“Downtown.”

“We can’t call Oliver now,” Felicity said, rubbing the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Moira’s jury just started deliberations.”

“I’ll go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Special Forces, remember? Just stay here. Try to drink some Gatorade.”

“I’m not really interested in puking up green foam again, thanks.”

“Hang in there, kid,” he said, patting her on the shoulder before bounding up the stairs.

As soon as Diggle was gone, though, Felicity started to feel like there was something really wrong with her. Before she just felt sick. Now, now she felt like...well, she was starting to understand why meth heads picked and scratched until their skin bled and then picked and scratched some more. Groaning, she removed the IV and clapped a handful of gauze on the inside of her elbow. She picked up her blanket and stood, slightly wobbly on her feet, and began to pace. It did not help with the nausea, but as soon as she stopped pacing, the critters-crawling-under-her-skin feeling started up again.

She was getting a whole new appreciation for how hard habits were to kick. If you knew this was waiting for you on the other side of high, what wouldn’t you do to to avoid it? What wouldn’t  _ she _ do?

Suddenly, Felicity couldn’t stay down in the basement anymore. She couldn’t breathe down there. She pushed her fuzzy coffee blanket off her shoulders and stumbled up the stairs and to the surface. Leaning against the wall in the alley, she took deep gulping breaths of air, realized she was not helping, and then tried the slow in through your nose, out through your mouth type breathing that everyone said was so good for you.

“Dr. Smoak?” someone behind her said.

“No,” she said. “Yes.”

“You seem a little under the weather.”

“I’m fine.” Felicity was suddenly conscious of a prickling on the back of her neck.

“Funny meeting you here, though. Outside Oliver Queen’s club. Didn’t you work for his clinic?”

She looked up, already knowing what she would see, knowing how rough she looked and felt, and she fought back anyway.  
  


 

* * *

 

 

Felicity knew she was, as Diggle would say, a soft target. But she prided herself on giving as good as she got. This time, she gave as good as she could, but the Count eventually dragged her across town to QC. She’d clawed his face pretty well, but he’d hit back and she knew her nose was bleeding and drying down the bottom of her face and neck. She could have tried some more advanced moves, but frankly, at the moment she didn’t have the coordination of a tipsy sloth. Mostly, she kept her eyes closed and tried to ignore the way how much her hands hurt tied to the chair. And the way he was playing with her lank, greasy hair.

“What do you want?

She opened her eyes and saw Oliver, in his hood gear, but as Oliver. Just as quickly, she closed them when she felt the Count running his hands over her shoulders. She was shaking and tired and she could not make herself listen to any of what they said until the gunfire started.

“You’re going to have to try harder!” Oliver yelled.

She looked for him, frantically, but couldn’t see where he was among the broken class and tasteful modern office furniture. Suddenly, the Count was cutting her bonds, and pulling her by her hair to the window. But Oliver apparently wasn’t where the Count had calculated and he was aiming his gun at nothing. Oliver was aiming an arrow at the Count’s heart.

“So now we move on to play B.” The Count reached inside his coat and brought out a syringe full of new vertigo and held it above her neck. Felicity felt her entire body tense, muscles drawn painfully against bone, as she warred to both get away from and nearer to the drug. Wait. Oliver’s arrow. A kill shot.

“You don’t have to,” she said, unable to articulate anything better. “You don’t have to.”

“Lower your bow,” the Count said. Oliver did. Good.

“Your problem is with me. It’s not with her.”

“Well, then, consider this your penalty for making me go to plan B in the first place.”

The three arrows went by her so fast, so close, that she thought might be more surprised than the Count, who was falling backwards out the window. Felicity stumbled forward and sat down rather precipitously on the floor.

“Hey. Hey. Hey,” Oliver was suddenly beside her, making little shushing noises, like she was a scared animal. Which was not far off base. It was awfully soothing. “It's alright. You're safe.”

“He shot you,” Felicity said. “Let me see.”

“Hey. It's nothing.” He was so quiet, almost whispering. She was so tired, she wanted to believe him. He rose and went to look out the window. Felicity could only imagine what he saw.

“You have to go,” she said. “The jury.”

“I’m not leaving until--”

“I’m okay, I’m just…” Felicity waved an unsteady hand at the scene. “You have to go. Oliver, your mom. I’m okay.”

“Digg is on his way.

“It’s your family, Oliver.” She smiled and wiped at her face. “Go.”

 

* * *

 

“She should have lost,” Oliver said. “She should have been convicted.”

“Did you want her to be?” Diggle asked.

“I expected her to be. Verdict didn’t make sense.” Oliver winced, pulling his coat off.

“Digg,” Felicity said. “Did you check his arm? I’d do it, but.” She held out her hands, still shaking like the proverbial leaf.

“I handled it earlier, when you guys got back,” Digg said. “You know, there was a time when you weren’t around and we did all of this ourselves.”

“Crazy talk.”

“I just wanted to check in on you,” Oliver said to her. “And give you a lift back to your place on my way home.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m feeling better.”

“She’s ready to come off the IV,” John said. “She should be good.”

“Go home, Diggle, get some rest. Felicity, did you have a purse?”

“Are you two talking around me? Again?”

“Her bag’s under the desk,” John said.

“Okay, so we are talking around me again.”

“What happened to her scrubs?”

“Unrecoverable.”

“Coat?”

“She didn’t have one, but we’ve got her blanket.”

“Do I need to say anything, or what.”

“I’ll go pull your car around.”

“Thanks, John.”

Felicity sighed and allowed herself to be led up the stairs. Diggle already had the car door open for her and Oliver actually handed her into the car, like a damsel into a carriage. Whatever. It was the Cayenne again, so she wasn’t going to fight it. One day, when she’d had a personality change and taken up celebrity dermatology, she too would have a Cayenne. Cherry red.

“Celebrity dermatology?” Oliver asked.

“Oh no. That was out loud?”

“No, it’s fine. Now I know what to get you for Hanukkah.”

“Don’t even joke about that!”

“You’re right, of course. Smoak women prefer cash.”

“You remembered that?” she turned to look at him, setting her face against the butter soft leather of the seat.

“You were very specific. Is this your place?” He looked up at the modest apartment building.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“I’ll walk you up.”

“Are you going to let me carry my own bag? No, of course not.”

She was only slightly embarrassed to let him into her spartan studio. There was her usual boxspring and mattress on the floor, but at least she’d made her bed that morning. She had a TV on stacked milk crates full of DVDs. Finally, there were two kitchen carts pushed together, covered in machine parts, with a single bar stool.

“Do you have something against furniture?”

“Not, per se, I just...haven’t had any since college. Listen, um, thank you. And I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“For what?” Oliver asked.

“I put you in a position where you had to kill someone. I didn’t want that to happen to you. Ever again.” If her voice shook, she was going to blame the drug. She pushed the tears away with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry I made you choose.”

“Felicity,” he said gently. “He had you. He was going to hurt you. There was no choice to make.” He smiled, but Felicity thought he looked sad and then he left.

She was definitely crying now and it definitely wasn’t the drug. She didn't think she'd be able to stop for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone should read The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson! Dr. John Snow was a real person and he really did beat cholera and change epidemiology forever.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, calm down. You sound like a wet cat. Digg, hand me that Duoderm.”

_ All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison. _

-Paracelsus

 

**Starling, 2013**

DIGG: Need Rx.

For what? Everything okay?

DIGG: Any good mood stabilizers?

Isabel?

DIGG: Forensic tech in from Central City. Very upbeat.

Oh no! Optimism! Save us!

DIGG: Chipper. 

DIGG: That vein in his forehead is pulsing again.

Placental abruption incoming. Later.

DIGG: Industrial centrifuge missing. 

DIGG: Why would you need one?

 

* * *

 

“You’re lucky you were wearing leather,” Felicity said, helping him get the jacket off. “Eesh. You want a local?”

“No.”

“Oliver, it’s road rash. It’s only going to get worse.”

“I said no, Felicity.”

“Fine, fine. Lay on your side. I have to irrigate this.” She helped him onto his side and propped a few dry towels under him before removing a pre-filled syringe of sterile saline. He groaned as she rinsed away the top layer of dirt and grime from his raw skin. Then came the antibacterial soap and water, which she did not mention, because she knew he was not a fan. He endured in silence until she started to lather the soap but he didn’t yell until she started rinsing.

“Yeoww!”

“Oh, calm down. You sound like a wet cat. Digg, hand me that Duoderm.” She dried his side off with fresh gauze and then opened up two large hydrocolloid dressings and applied them over the clean abrasions. Digg handed her a gray hoodie and she helped Oliver get his left arm in and then draped it over his right shoulder.

“Thank you,” Oliver said.

“Any time.” Felicity pushed the soggy, pink-tinged towels into the trash bag at the foot of the exam table. “So. Industrial centrifuge. Super-strength. Truck full of O negative.”

“You were right to ask if I knew more than I was letting on. I’ve seen men with abilities like that before.”

“Where?” Felicity asked.

“Where do you think,” Diggle said.

“During the second year, I came across the remains of a World War II Japanese submarine. It was a serum designed to create human weapons.”

“What’s next?” John asked. “Aliens?”

“This is real, Diggle. Those five years I was away, I came across things that just..defy explanation. There was a doctor.”

Felicity looked up sharply.

“His name was Ivo. He came to the island to test the serum on people. The ones that survived, their endurance, reflexes, and strength were all enhanced.”

“And you think he’s in Starling?” she asked quietly.

“He’s dead,” Oliver said definitively. “And so is everyone else that he injected with the serum. The last of which I burned.”

“You think someone found the recipe.”

“I think someone wants to make more of it. A lot more.”

“Why,” Felicity wondered, “did you have to end up on the island of Dr. Moreau? What else do these goons need to make it viable?”

“A strong sedative.” He held out a twisted, bloody arrow.

“Oh, Oliver. Gloves. Gloves. We talked about this.” She quickly pulled on a fresh pair. “I’m sure this is important, but there’s a reason I didn’t go into pathology, and you should feel free to just leave this in the next guy.”

“I need you to find out what the sedative is, so we can predict where they’ll strike next.”

“That’s...a wide variety of drugs.”

“Strong enough to knock a large man unconscious.”

“Okay, but. You’re not going to like this,” Felicity sighed. “This isn’t enough blood.”

“What?”

“If I want to find out what this is, the first thing I have to do is turn it over to hematology to test it for a class of drugs, like antipsychotics. Then I have to ask hematology to test it for the metabolites of specific drugs, like haldol. All of that takes a lot of money and a lot of blood. I work in a hospital, not a forensic laboratory.” She cleared her throat. “But word on the street is you might have access to one of those?”

“No,” Oliver said, with a particularly unpleasant expression.

“Then your sedative is going to remain a mystery.”

“Diggle, what did you find out about Mr. Allen?”

“Is this the CSI from Central City?”

“Yeah,” Diggle said. “He’s not who he says he is.”

“As long as he can run our sample, does it matter?”

“Fine,” Oliver said. “But I want you to supervise.”

“You are aware that I won’t know half of what he’s doing?”

“That’s more than the rest of us,” Diggle pointed out.

 

* * *

 

“Hello?” Felicity poked her head around the corner, into their ad hoc lab. “CSI guy?”

“Hi!” A slender, handsome young man with an eager smile appeared and offered his hand. “Barry. Allen.”

“Felicity. Smoak.”

“Mr. Queen’s doctor friend, of course.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Um, he asked me to bring you this. It’s a blood sample from the police department. We’re hoping you can isolate a sedative in the blood.”

“How did the police get it?”

“I...have no idea.” Really, she was not cut out for this. Lying to bad guys was one thing. This felt like kicking a puppy. 

“How did you get it?”

“Oliver has a lot of connections.”

“Wow! Pays to work for a billionaire.”

“I don’t work for him.”

“Oh, so you’re just...friends.”

“Right,” Felicity narrowed her eyes. Was the puppy fishing? For her? “I’ll just...sit over here, then.”

“And I’ll start working. On this.”

Barry worked diligently while Felicity opened twitter and instagram on her phone, neither of which she’d had time to look at in weeks. It made her strangely nostalgic to see photos of the first snow in Boston. Outside in Starling, it was dumping rain, which was somehow colder. 

“I can’t wait,” Barry was saying.

“Hm?”

“The particle accelerator!” He nodded towards the TV.

“Oh, right.”

“You’re not excited?”

“Not really,” Felicity shrugged. “If it doesn’t kill cancer or MRSA or HIV, I can’t bring myself to care anymore. I guess my life is pretty narrow.”

“Not at all! You’re down in the trenches, fighting the good fight.”

She couldn’t help smiling. He was so damn nice. It felt good to be around someone who was so unapologetically sunny. He was basically a human hot water bottle and Felicity wanted to spend more time around him. That was, predictably, when Oliver showed up and ruined everything and Barry spilled his entire tragic backstory, exposing it like an open wound, and retreated.

“You kicked the puppy,” she hissed at Oliver.

“He did lie about who he really was,” he said defensively.

“That line forms behind you.”

 

* * *

 

O.Q.: Picked up dress.

Dress?

O.Q.: For party.

Party?

O.Q.: The one tonight.

Is the dress for me?

O.Q.: Who else?

Maybe someone you actually invited?

O.Q.: Diggle will bring dress and pick you up. 8.

I’m busy. 

I have a date. 

I’m washing my hair.

I'm trying CrossFit.

I’m going on a silent meditation retreat.

O.Q.: 8.

 

* * *

 

If it weren’t such a nice dress, Felicity would have absolutely ditched out on the party she had never really been invited to. But it was a beautiful dress, aquamarine, with sleeves so she wouldn’t have to answer prying questions about her scars. Diggle even brought shoes, fancy flats whose designer’s name Felicity could not even bring herself to say out loud. She would pretend they were knockoffs, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to touch them with her feet.

“This is a bribe,” she accused him.

“Is it working?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“No jewelry?” she asked, in mock horror.

“Maybe next time, pretty woman.”

“Diggle!”

“What? Lyla loves that movie.”

Felicity’s good mood lasted as far as the front door of the Queen mansion. Under normal circumstances, she would be beside herself with curiosity about how the other half lived. Oil portraits? Fur coats? How much gold plating could she reasonably expect? It all seemed like fun until she walked in and realized there were maybe ten guests and one of them was Isabel Rochev.

“Does Oliver know?” she asked Diggle.

“I don’t think he’s been down yet.”

Felicity saw motion out of the corner of her eye. And she hustled in her beautiful and shockingly comfortable shoes to the base of the staircase, where the impossibly regal and recently incarcerated Moira was descending beside her son.

“Good evening,” Felicity said, like Moira totally knew who she was. “Oliver, can I have a word?”

“Of course.” Oliver stepped to the side. “Look, I’m sorry if I overreacted a little bit earlier.”

“We’ll get back to that. Right now, you need to apologize to your mother, not to me.”

It turns out that poise was the true secret of the other half. Maybe it was something you could cultivate when you had leisure time and personal chefs and glass slippers. Felicity had never seen a performance like the one that Moira and Thea were putting on, graciously thanking the few guests that had deigned to make an appearance.

“Time for a dance?” Oliver asked, appearing at her side.

“It’s sweet that you think I know how.”

“Thank you for coming tonight.”

“I almost didn’t. But then the shoes.”

“Thea really likes M--”

“No, you can’t say it out loud.”

He raised an eyebrow, looking like he wanted to maybe smile.

“Then they’ll be too nice for me.”

“So I probably shouldn’t tell you the dress is--”

“Can it, Queen.”

Across the room, Moira caught sight of them and made a slight motion with her shoulders and hand.

“Go ahead,” Felicity said. “I’m fine.”

“In case I don’t get a chance later, you look beautiful tonight,” he said.

"Rude," she muttered.

 

* * *

 

“I can’t raise him,” Diggle said with professional urgency. “I gotta go.”

Felicity rose and grabbed her messenger bag.

“What are you doing?”

“Let’s not waste time with you deluding yourself that I’m going to wait here like Princess Peach, okay?”

“Behind me, all the way, you understand?”

“Got it.”

Inside the ARGUS warehouse was a scene she was going to have nightmares about for a while. Her first thought was that if those syringes were full of ketamine, Oliver was already dead. The drug would have induced hypoventilation and then hypoxia and then he would have died. Felicity kicked aside the remaining syringes while she snapped on her gloves and knelt beside him, yanking the syringes out of his leg. Unlabeled.

“Digg, this is coded. Why the fuck would they-- It doesn’t matter. Call Lyla. Find out what the hell this is.”

Behind her, she heard Diggle pick up the phone. Oliver was unconscious, pupils dilated. She pulled out her stethoscope and silenced her own thumping heart to listen to his: thready and fast, breaths shallow.

“Give me the phone,” she said. “You have to get him in the van--now.”

“John?” Lyla sounded both peeved and gratified to be getting a call from him late at night.

“Sorry, no, it’s your fake cousin Felicity.”

“Is John okay?”

“He’s fine. But our mutual friend, not so much.”

“What can I do?”

“I have in my hand an ARGUS syringe with no name, just a code.”

“How--”

“Please do not ask me anything right now. Later.”

“Give me the code. I’ll call you back.”

Diggle picked Oliver up in a fireman’s carry, making it look absurdly easy. Felicity picked up the empty syringes, dropping them in a small sharp safe hazmat bag, in case she needed them. Looking back over her shoulder, she wondered what eventuality ARGUS was preparing for that they would need all these drugs, all at once. She felt genuine fear that someday she might find out.

She did not justify to herself, much less to Diggle, why she held Oliver’s hand on the way back to the lair. True, she was using one hand to feel his pulse. But the other one was interlaced with his. Diggle saw, of course, because he had engaged maximum operational awareness, and he was probably looking through walls. 

_ Please, G-d. Please help me save my friend, just one more time. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That plothole always bothered me: JUST CALL LYLA.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well. You fell onto a bunch of Factor IX and your blood turned to sludge, so I pumped you full of a blood thinner that also works as a rat poison, and now I’m waiting to see if your heart explodes.”

_ Show me a sane man and I will cure him _ .

-Carl Jung

 

**Starling, 2015**

“Go,” Digg said when he answered his phone and listened intently. “Felicity, it’s Factor IX.”

“Shit!” she said, staring at Oliver’s EKG with growing horror. “Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.”

“I gotta go. Lyla, thank you.”

“We need a Vitamin K antagonist,” Felicity said. “I need you to look through our drugs. If I leave him, I’m afraid his heart is going to stop.”

“What am I looking for?”

“It’s probably under Warfarin or Coumadin.”

“I got Coumadin--Felicity, this is a powder!”

“Yes, I am aware. That is how it comes. Okay, okay, in that top drawer on my instrument table, there’s a group of of syringes filled with sterile water. Find one that’s 2.7 ml.” She watched the EKG like a hawk, feeling cold sweat break out at the small of her back.

“Got it.”

“Okay, now pierce the cap on the powder with the needle and add the water, slowly.” Felicity climbed up on top of the gurney and prepared for chest compressions. “Roll it between your hands if you need to, but don’t shake.”

“What the hell?” He must have looked up and seen her, or maybe heard the noises of distress the EKG was making.

“Starting compressions,” she said. “Okay, now fill the syringe. Find a vein, preferably an arm. Good, the whole thing. Now make me up another one.”

While she continued chest compressions, praying she didn’t break a rib, she watched the monitor and felt the fear sweat spread and soak her clothes and hair. Her mind was clear and cool, but her body knew better. Finally, the EKG stopped screaming. Felicity stopped compressions and it registered a relatively normal heartbeat.

“Jesus Christ,” Digg said, wiping his face with his forearm.

“Do you know where the closest 24 hour pharmacy is?” She climbed off the table with Digg’s help. Her legs were suddenly made of jelly.

“Of course.”

“Good. I need you go get an INR Self-Check machine. They’ll be behind the counter at the pharmacy, with the drug tests. They’re usually called coagu-something-something.”

“I’m on it.” He reached for his coat and paused at the foot of the stairs. “Are you going to be okay here alone?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason,” he said mildly. “I’ll be fast.”

As soon as the door shut behind him, Felicity sat down--hard--on the concrete floor. This was not her favorite day. She did not like this day. Really, she needed to get up and monitor Oliver and she would, she totally would, just as soon as she was ready to hold his life in her hands again. Which would happen. For thirty seconds, she sat on the floor. Then with a deep breath, she got up, and went back to work.

Over the summer, when Felicity had refused therapy and support groups,  Digg had twisted her arm into starting what he called ‘a mind-body discipline.’ She had been skeptical to say the least. It turned out that she hated yoga, hated tai-chi, and violently loathed dance. So he had bought her a gi and driven her to a women’s class and sat outside like an anxious parent. But he didn’t need to worry, because she loved karate. At first, she hadn’t been able to do very much, her bones still healing and range of motion seriously limited. But she got to yell as loud as she wanted and learned how to fight back while she was injured and that was enough for her. When class was over, she always felt better.

Her practice hadn’t helped her much with the Count, which hadn’t improved her confidence any. It had bought her some time with the Dollmaker, and the breakfall drills had kept her from hitting her head when he’d thrown her to the ground. But it wasn’t until Oliver woke up and reached for her throat that she had a chance to execute a clumsy but effective shuto uke, slamming the knife edge of her hand into a nerve bundle on the inside of his arm. Suddenly fully awake, Oliver’s hand fell away.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re okay. Don’t try to sit up. I have no idea what your blood pressure is doing.”

Of course he sat up.

“Digg’s on a pharmacy run--you can’t leave until I check your INR. Don’t stand up. I’m afraid you’ll fall down and hit your head and bleed to death, so please don’t stand up.”

“What happened?”

“Well. You fell onto a bunch of Factor IX and your blood turned to sludge, so I pumped you full of a blood thinner that also works as a rat poison, and now I’m waiting to see if your heart explodes.”

“That sounds...bad.”

“You took like five years off my life.”

He had the audacity to smile at her. Then Digg arrived with a CVS bag and a huge sigh of relief when he saw Oliver, conscious and coherent. Felicity made grabby hands and Digg handed her the INR self-tester.

“Let me show you how to use this,” she said to Oliver, and walked him through it. It wasn’t any more complicated than a glucose meter, but she made sure there was no way he could get it wrong. His first results were acceptable. “You’re going to do this every half hour and text the results to me until further notice.”

“Okay,” he said. She was expecting more pushback than that.

“How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“We need backup,” Diggle said.

“You’re right. I’ll talk to Lance.” Oliver’s phone dinged. “And then I have to go home,” he said, looking at it.

“Every thirty minutes,” she said. “No alcohol. No aspirin. No bumping or cutting anything. Lots of water. If blood comes out of anywhere, call me. If blood gushes, call 911.”

“Got it,” Oliver said, heading for the stairs.

“I mean anywhere, Oliver.”

Diggle gave her a ride home. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she was surprised to hear her phone ringing as she got out of the shower. She was standing naked in front of her mirror, wondering who this scrawny, tired stranger was when the William Tell Overture began to play.  It was Oliver’s ring. She almost dropped the phone directly into the toilet as she scrambled to answer it quickly.

“Where are you bleeding from? Is it gushing? I told you to call 911 if it’s gushing.”

“Dr. Smoak, I need you to come to the Queen mansion.”

“Seriously, Oliver, where is the blood coming from?”

“Roy’s been shot. With an arrow.”

Felicity held the phone away from her ear, blinked at it, and then put it back. “Oliver, did you shoot Roy?”

“It’s a long story. “

“You shot Roy!” That was a legitimate shriek. “Roy?!”

“I’m going to send Diggle to pick you up.”

“Do not pull that arrow out!” she said, tripping over her dirty clothes in search of clean ones. “If you nicked an artery, he could--”

“That’s already been taken care of.”

“You pulled the arrow out? Did you use gloves? Did you even check to see where it was in relation to the femoral--”

“Thank you,” he said, and hung up on her. She looked back into the mirror and shook her head.

“It’s my worst nightmare. I am practicing fucking concierge medicine for morons.”

 

* * *

 

“Don’t drink that!” Felicity snatched the booze out of Roy’s hands. “You are all underage! And it only makes you bleed harder.”

“Hi, Doc,” Roy said, visibly sweating.

“Thea, go put this back where it came from. Or at least hide it somewhere that gives me plausible deniability. Sin, go get me some more towels and see if you can start a fire in that fireplace. We’re going to need to burn most of this.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“You could have thanked me by not getting shot.”

“It’s not my favorite either,” he admitted.

“What the hell did you do?”

“What did  _ he _ do?” Thea was indignant. “That freak shot him!”

“He was, uh, discouraging me.”

“From what?”

“Ow! Fuck!”

“Language,” Felicity said. “Do you have the arrow? Did it look pretty clean?”

“Except for all the blood, sure,” Sin said. “Roy was trying to find out what happened to my friend Max. The cops said it was an OD, but he was clean.”

“Why would the cops lie about that?” Felicity asked, genuinely curious.

“We don’t know,” Roy said, eyes screwed tight as she began suturing. “He gave blood the day he died, though.”

“More blood,” she muttered.

“What?” The asked.

“Nothing. It just seems like something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

“Denmark?” Roy asked, confused.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Thea said.

After doing what she could for Roy, handing over some penicillin, and ordering them to burn the evidence in the bedroom’s fireplace, Felicity stepped into the hall and heard Oliver’s voice.

“I wear that hood to honor your father. And you.”

“Oliver?” she asked softly.

He inhaled sharply and then turned to face her.

“Are you okay?”

“The medicine you gave me, are there any side effects?”

“Yeah. Bleeding, of course. Headache, stomach pain, unexplained bruising, diarrhea, vomiting, fever. Necrosis, but it’s very rare. Is something wrong?”

“I’m, uh. I’m seeing people.”

“Who?” She asked without thinking. It wasn't really a medical question.

“A girl named Shado who was with me on the island.”

“You’re checking your INR?”

“Yeah.”

“When did it start?”

“After I woke up.”

“I’ll check your blood when we get back to the...you know. But it sounds like it might be an acute stress reaction. It’s not unusual after a traumatic experience.”

“What traumatic experience?”

“What--what--what trauma?” Felicity was slack-jawed. “Oliver, I was doing chest compressions. On you. I’m going to be dreaming about that for a while.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me, you shmegegge.”

He looked like he wanted to smile again. Her phone chirped and she saw that it was an encrypted alert from her piggyback on the SCPD’s connection to AFIS. She had a name.”

“Cyrus Gold.”

“Who’s Cyrus Gold?” he asked.

“He left his fingerprints on your hood. What? I made Barry show me the fingerprinting basics. He gave me a little kit and everything.” She smiled. The kit was adorable. “Listen, I’ll see you back at the...place. But take it easy, okay?”

“Sure.”

“I mean it, Oliver. You take crazy chances.”

“I’ll be careful,” he said, meeting her eyes steadily. “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

Careful was not the word that sprang to mind when she walked down the stairs at Verdant that day. Broken glass, broken equipment, all over the place. Oliver looked somewhat sheepish, broom in hand.

“Holy shit. Did someone break in?”

He shook his head.

“Did you, um, see something?”

“Yeah.”

“I can do another tox screen.” She took a deep breath. Time to tell truth to cranky, cranky power. “But I suspect that the issue is not pharmacological.”

“You think it’s all in my head.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not real,” she said quickly. “Things inside your head are just as real as outside, sometimes realer.”

Oliver did not look convinced.

“I’ll finish this,” she said, gesturing at the floor. “You need to go to Starling General. Something’s happened to Captain Lance. I’ll hack what I can and get you more details on the way. And, also, please quit shooting our friends. We don’t have that many.”

 

* * *

 

Felicity tried not to eavesdrop on Oliver and Digg’s conversation. She knew it was probably about the fact that he was seeing dead people, M Knight Shyamalan style. In the meantime, she was working on the dimensions of the key that Lance had given to Oliver, or rather, to his alter ego. Her dummy email pinged and she opened it with delight.

“I got something! I called the manufacturer and gave him a story involving planted evidence, wealthy suspects, and my best friend being bludgeoned to death beside her own pool. There’s a man on death row for the murder, but I know he didn’t do it, so I’m investigating on my own. But I’m making some powerful people angry and--”

Diggle cleared his throat.

“The key fits a lock somewhere in Crescent Circle. Wait--where do you think you’re going?” She watched in alarm as Oliver began to suit up. “No no no. You can’t go out there like this.”

“I have to stop this.”

“Oliver,” she said firmly. “That man left you half dead, which which is 50 percent better than how he left Detective Hilton.”

“Felicity, I don’t have a choice. I’ll come back.”

“Promise me,” she demanded. He was silent. “Oliver, promise me!” 

No promises were made. On the one hand, she was relieved that he didn’t lie to her. It wasn’t a promise anyone could really keep, especially him. On the other hand, it made it that much harder to lie to herself. Felicity spent the next hour with her heart planted firmly in her stomach. With the storm above, she felt more than ever like an anxious lighthouse keeper, watching the sea and shore for a ship daring greatly.

When Oliver came down the stairs she felt like she was exhaling for the first time since he left. That was a feeling that didn’t bear much examination, so she pressed on. 

“Roy was injected with the serum.”

“Did he survive?” Roy, Roy, stupid Roy. 

“Yeah, but we are going to have to keep an eye on him.”

In her back pocket, Felicity’s phone buzzed. It was a surprise, but not as much as what her Caller ID told. “Sorry,” she said. “I have to take this.” Felicity hustled around the corner where her voice wouldn’t carry so well. “Barry?” she whispered.

“Hi!” he sounded cheerful, per usual

“Hi.” She was nonplussed. “Um. Did you get home okay?”

“I did! I made it back in time, but I missed the cutoff for the line at STAR labs. I was late, as usual.”

“Oh, right! The particle accelerator. I’m sorry you missed the line.”

“I’ll live. Listen, um, I sent you a little present, to your work address at the hospital.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you,” Barry said, and she could tell he was smiling. “Well, technically, for your friend. Who I know you don’ t know, but I thought you might know someone who did know. Don’t tell him who it came from, on the off chance that you do know who.”

“Thank you, I think?”

“I know I’m a little slow, but I’m not that slow. And, um, if you ever need someone to talk to, about medicine or anything else, I’m always here.”

“Thanks, Barry.”

“Merry Christmas, Felicity.”

“Happy Hanukkah.”

“Oh! That, too!”

She was smiling when she hung up. It was nice to be around someone who was just nice, uncomplicated. Open, even. 

“You’re a soldier,” Oliver was saying. “What’s the primary purpose of an army?

“War.”

Well. There went nice and open and uncomplicated. Felicity looked at Oliver and thought about his sad smiles and thought maybe uncomplicated was overrated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in the process of moving, so things are a little crazy on my end. Thanks for sticking with me! I hope I can keep up the pace while I'm in transition.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A bomber with a three hundred page manifesto,” Felicity said. “What a wannabe.”
> 
> “How’s Barry?” Digg asked, still about as subtle as an aircraft carrier. She was fully prepared to carry on a robust conversation about the Unabomber--she’d gone through a true crime phase in college--but no, U.S.S. Diggle torpedoed another dodge.

_ Dios que dá la llaga, dá la medicina. _

-Miguel de Cervantes

 

**Starling, 2014**

Felicity was well aware that this sort of behavior counted as pathetic. She sniffled and wiped her eyes as she settled into her seat on the train. She’d known him for five minutes and she still felt nothing but misery. Barry’s friends were almost as nice as he was. Caitlin, also a doctor, shared his charts and promised to communicate updates to her. Cisco brought her coffee. She even liked Joe West, another cop, which made her really question if she was losing her touch. But nothing could change the essential facts: five weeks was too long a time to be in a coma.

It wasn’t like Felicity hadn’t lost people before. But it was worse with Barry. He was warm and smiley and his name was  _ Barry _ for pity’s sake. He was a nerd. Like her. Maybe that was it. She was staring directly into a Smoak-sized example of What If. Meanwhile, she had Roy to worry about, too. Oliver insisted that she not tip him off by asking for bloodwork or even a basic physical exam. Oliver was acting gun shy (bow shy?) and it spooked her. So obviously she was worried about him, too.

She was essentially one big knot of anxiety and forced inactivity in an enclosed space wasn’t helping. As the train began to pull away, she took a happy pill and pulled out her tablet. Her budget hotel room in Central City was not in a great neighborhood and she woke up several times a night to the sound of sirens. The train was much better, and fell asleep to the Dandy Warhols. It was the best sleep she’d had in some time, until her news alert woke her up to let her know that someone was bombing Starling.

 

* * *

 

“A bomber with a three hundred page manifesto,” Felicity said. “What a wannabe.”

“How’s Barry?” Digg asked, still about as subtle as an aircraft carrier. She was fully prepared to carry on a robust conversation about the Unabomber--she’d gone through a true crime phase in college--but no,  _ U.S.S. Diggle _ torpedoed another dodge.

“He is in a coma. His Glasgow score is garbage. He’s a vegetable, Digg. I...just needed to see it for myself.”

“I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Absolutely not. Wait--shh.” She turned up the volume on Oliver’s comm.

“You think there’s a leak in the department?” Oliver was saying.

“I think those phone records are the only way to know for sure,” Lance said.

“I’ll ask--”

Suddenly, they both stopped talking. Digg spun in his chair and picked up an old fashioned headset that she had connected to the city’s emergency dispatch.

“Starling City municipal building,” he said.

“Give me a location,” Oliver growled in his Hood voice.

“I can do better,” Felicity said, pulling up a program that Oracle had shared and that she had refined. Gotham had its own share of mad bombers with cell phone detonators. “Come on, come on…”

“Where is he?”

“He’s moving. I think he’s in a car.”

“Give me an intersection.”

“You’re closing on him--about half a block ahead.”

“I see him.”

“Turn left on 67th,” she said, following the blinking icon superimposed on the road map of Starling.

“Felicity, I’ve lost him!” Oliver growled.

“What?” the blinking stopped. “Me, too.” Then it came back. “Got him back. Left on Gerrard. You should be right on top of him”

“It’s not him, Felicity!” he yelled over the sound of unhappy drivers. “

“Shit!” She pushed a hand through her unwashed hair. “He must be spoofing the signal.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s gone.”

Oh, it mattered. And she found out just how much when Oliver, still in his leathers, slipped back into the batcave, loaded for bear.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“He’s using a cell to detonate those bombs,” Felicity said, her stomach sinking. “He clearly knows how to fake a cell signal as well.”

“And you were supposed to know more than him!”

She stared at him, totally frozen. Her skin crawled and the old terror came back again. Was he looming? It felt like he was looming. “What?”

“People are dying. I would like you to pull your head out of Central City and get back in the game.”

“All right,” John said, stepping forward and fixing Oliver with a look. “Maybe we should just take a breath here.”

“What?” she asked again, scooting the chair back out of range of his anger. Right at that moment, she hated him and she hated herself for being afraid of him.

“When the first bomb went off, you weren’t here. When the second bomb went off, you sent me the wrong way!”

“I was only--”

“You didn’t have it tonight.”

“I need some air.” Felicity grabbed her bag and bolted. She hopped onto her bike and pedaled desperately in the direction of home. She was sweating like a whore in church, but much calmer by the time she climbed the stairs to her apartment and locked the door behind her. On the one hand, what a prick. On the other hand...yeah, upon reflection? Still a prick. 

What she couldn’t forgive was the way she froze, like the proverbial deer in the headlights, whenever Oliver was angry. That wasn’t fair--it wasn’t just Oliver. It was men, men she trusted. It wasn’t like she’d frozen when the Count had her. She’d fought back, however ineffectually. But one time, when she was still living at John’s place, he’d raised his voice when he realized they were out of cauliflower. He wasn’t even mad at her, he was mad at the cruciferous vegetable, and she still burst into tears.

Apparently, telling yourself to grow up, over and over and over, was not working. At least she hadn’t cried this time. She’d done exactly what they said to do in her women’s karate class: avoid injury and get the hell out. That had to be a step up from crying, right? Felicity dumped her bag next to her bed and fell face-first onto it. Fuck it. She would just live here now. She’d become a sad bed person. That was fine.

 

* * *

 

“Felicity,” Oliver said.

“Here,” she replied automatically, looking up from her keyboard. “Did you get him?”

“No. He said he rigged the Plaza with an explosive device. Tell Digg it’s around the perimeter.”

“Okay--hold the line.” Felicity relayed the information and then clicked back to Oliver--whose GPS signal hadn’t moved as much as an inch. “You’re heading to the Plaza, too, right?”

“Not yet. I need you to pull me up anything you can on the store.”

“What’s going on? Oh no. Booby trap?”

“He says he packed the explosives behind the drywall.”

“I don’t think a cell signal would be reliable enough,” she guessed. “To be sure, he’d need to wire it.”

“To some kind of power supply.”

“It could be connected to the store’s electricity, but it could also be hooked up to anything with a battery. But would he do that? No. That’s not his MO. He likes sure things. He’d want to be sure.”

“Felicity!”

“Right, right. Okay, so...the last building permit required an ADA compliance upgrade because it was originally constructed in the seventies. Which, as I learned in a particularly rat infested foster home in Vegas, if you blow one fuse, you throw them all.”

“I just need to sever one?”

“I know you won’t appreciate this reference, like, at all, but it’s time to cut the LVAD wire.”

“I see a fuse box.”

And then the line went dead.

“Oliver?” she asked, which was dumb, since the line was dead. But she asked again. “Oliver? Oliver?”

“It’s alright. I’m alright.”

Felicity exhaled and leaned over, putting her head between her knees. Everything was a little black and fuzzy around the edges. What. A. Prick.

“Get to the rally. Help Diggle. I’m on my way.”

 

* * *

 

“Exactly how much has Oracle taught you?” Diggle asked, giving her a solid side-eye.

“About hacking? Quite a bit. Bomb defusion? About ten minutes in my Uber on the way over here. And let me tell you, that driver’s got to have some questions.”

“Listen, we don’t have to disarm it. Just disable it.”

“A distinction without a difference.”

“Be careful. He probably put in a safeguard. Tampering with it will set off a deadman’s switch.”

“I am really regretting that LVAD joke right now.”

“Step away,” said a voice behind her. “Or we all know how this ends.”

It was Shrapnel, of course, looking fairly well-groomed and handsome for a Kaczynski wannabe. And he had a switch in his left hand and a pistol in his right hand. Beside her, Digg took off running straight at the bomber. It was probably that special forces training that made him so brave, but she didn’t really approve. The bullet caught him in what Felicity hoped was a meaty part of his shoulder--she didn’t dare move herself.

Predictably, she heard the engine of Oliver’s bike as everything went to hell around them. The important thing was that Shrapnel moved the barrel of the gun away from her. Oliver was doing some fancy maneuvers with his bike, but Felicity was already pulling off her own hoodie, so she missed what exactly exploded. The already panicked crowd was in full blown flight mode as she wadded the sweatshirt up and pressed it into his hands.

“Keep pressure on it,” she said. “Don’t move.”

“Felicity, the bomb.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the Cirque de Soleil type nonsense that was going down. “Yeah, we’re gonna let Oliver handle that.” 

 

* * *

 

“It’s just a through and through,” Diggle said.

“You want I should slap a bandaid and a sling on it and send you home? Lyla would kill me.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that Lyla likes you?”

“At least one more. Hold still. I’m trying to keep this neat.”

“It’s just a scar, Felicity.”

“Do you really want to heckle the woman in charge of your pain medication? Really?”

Diggle exhaled, exasperated. She had all of her fine motor skills back, but she had to take things slow. And she had no intention of giving her friends anything but the best, so it was taking a little time. At least concentrating on her sutures allowed her to ignore Oliver’s presence.

“How’s the shoulder?”

“Fine,” Diggle said.

“Middling,” Felicity said, clipping her thread and taping on a dressing. “He needs to go home and rest. And do not leave without a sling,” she warned him. “I will know if you’re not wearing it. Don’t make that face.”

“What face?” John actually sounded amused.

“Your I’m-too-badass-for-my-shirt face.”

“You should go home and get some rest,” Oliver said. Felicity tried not to smirk, pleased that he was backing her up now, but irked that it had taken him so long. She didn’t miss the look that Diggle gave Oliver, but she did ignore it. She helped Diggle get his sling on and sent him home 

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said quietly.

“Okay.”

“I--what?”

“I said okay.”

“Felicity, I---I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t feel like it’s okay, Felicity.”

“Well--whatever.” And with that eloquent comeback, she rose to her feet and went to grab her bag.

“Felicity--”

“Stop saying my name like that!”

“Like what?” His voice was quiet now, calm and infuriating.

“Like you care!”

Oliver looked like she’d slapped him.

“Forget it,” she muttered and went for the exit. “I’ll see you later.”

“I didn’t know you were in foster care.”

She froze at the base of the stairs.

“You said something, when I was in the toy store, about a foster home in--”

“No, I didn’t.” The instinct to lie was immediate and overwhelming. She almost didn’t realize she was doing it.

He sighed and for the first time she saw how tired he looked tonight.

“Can we just, not talk about it?”

“Of course.” He stood up, but didn’t approach. “I am sorry.”

“I know.”

“I rely on you.”

“Really?”

“Really. You’re my partner.” Now he took a step forward. “Barry’s gonna wake up.”

“No.” Her eyes stung. “He won’t. I just had to see it for myself.”

“Felicity.” He put his hands on her shoulder.

“I said to stop saying my name.”

“Okay.” Then, to her great surprise, he leaned forward and kissed her very gently on the top of her head and then released her to go home in the dark.


	12. Chapter 12

_ How should I know? I dropped out of school to become a doctor _ .

-M*A*S*H

 

**Starling, 2014**

 

555-4678: Smoak. We got a problem.

Sorry, but do I know you?

555-4678: YES BITCH YOU DO.

Sin?

555-4678: We need to meet.

Are you okay?

Are you in trouble?

Did something happen?

555-4678: We need to meet.

My shift ends at 8pm.

Meet me at BBB?

555-4678: Your trying to fatten me up.

*You’re

555-4678: JFC you never change.

 

* * *

 

Sin had a split fat lip and a sore jaw--she could only look at the burgers and would attempt only a milkshake.

“I’m trying to be polite,” Felicity said. “But who the fuck did this?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, I think you’ll find that it does.”

“That’s not why I wanted to meet.”

“Who is she?”

“She?”

“Oh---I didn’t--are you dating boys now? There’s nothing wrong with dating boys. I date boys. I mean I did, once upon a time, when I dated at all. Boys are fine. I never--”

“Relax, Smoak. I still dig girls. But this was a he. Hypothetically, I mean. But this,” Sin gestured to her cheek, “isn’t what I’m here for.”

“But we will be coming back to it.”

“Another dream comes true.”

“Sin.” Felicity looked her in the eye and the younger woman shifted slightly in her chair.

“There’s something wrong with Roy,” she whispered.

“Wrong how?” Felicity asked carefully.

“You know him--he’s a meathead, but he would never hurt a fly. He puts up with Thea Queen, for fuck’s sake.”

“Sin, did Roy hit you?”

“Not just me.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. Listen, I think I know someone who can help.”

“The vigilante.”

“Um, no, I don’t…”

“Give it up, Smoak. Everyone knows you’ve got the hook up.”

“Oh, no, we’re not--we don’t---”

“No, no, the hook up, not hooking up.” Sin snorted. “That would be pretty sweet, though. Do you think he’d take the jacket off for it?”

“Oh. My G-d. We cannot talk about this.”

“Dr. Smoak, do you have a crush on our masked marauder? You do, you totally do.”

“Sin, shh.” Felicity looked around the restaurant desperately.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell. But riddle me this: how much Gold Bond do you think it takes to get into those pants every night? It’s gotta be sweaty, right? Do you think he has to peel them off?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Nobody knows. Now, I don’t have any experience in this area, but I have to think that ball sweat would be an issue.”

“I hate you so much right now.”

“Well, it’s too late, Smoak. You’re never getting your friendship bracelet back. BFFs five-ever.”

“Shut up and drink your milkshake.”

“Smoak and Vigilante, sitting in a tree…”

 

* * *

 

“Oliver?”   


“It’s Felicity. Obviously. Um, I just got an alert. You need to get downtown. Laurel’s been arrested.”

“What?”

“Well, piecing together what I’m hearing over the radio, narcotics possession.” Felicity braced herself. Laurel was the third rail of Oliver’s psyche. You touched it, you died.

“Laurel?” he sounded bewildered, like he’d completely forgotten her DUI in the autumn. Poor, poor, stupid man.

“You need to get downtown.”

“Yeah.”

“Be nice to Lance, okay?”

Oliver sighed.

“I said: be nice to Lance, okay?”

“Okay.”

 

* * *

 

“Did Laurel really shoot him?” Felicity asked, checking his pupils with her pen light. She was definitely baselining him, ASAP. 

“She saved my life.”

“That’s a good thing, Oliver,” Digg said, because apparently this had to be pointed out to him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“She really had me believing that Sebastian Blood was a criminal mastermind. And the only reason that I believed was because it was Laurel. I do have a blind spot where she’s concerned. Not anymore.”

“Well, not to bring the mood down any further, but two things can be true at the same time,” Felicity said.

“Come again?” Digg said.

“You know the old saying, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you? Just because’ Laurel’s an addict doesn’t mean she’s totally unreliable.”

Digg scoffed. “What do you two have against winning?”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Felicity said. “We have to do something about Roy. Whatever you were afraid of...I think it’s happening.”

Oliver sighed and hung his head.

“I know, I know. But...he hit Sin. In the face.”

“What?” The math was written all over his face: face + hit + Thea = rage stroke.

“I hope it goes without saying that it’s not like him. We have to do something, Oliver. Please.”

“I’ll handle it.”

 

* * *

 

Felicity knew that the boys were talking about something, but she couldn’t hear a damn thing over the sound of Oliver’s torso working the salmon ladder. Did he shave his armpits? He must. But there was no stubble. Did he wax? That was a commitment to pain tolerance. Which led to another thought: what else did he depilate? What did he smell like when he was just starting to sweat? She twirled a loose thread on her blue scrub top as she contemplated. Old Spice? Please, let it be Old Spice.

“Felicity.” Diggle said her name like he’d been saying it for a while. Oliver was on the ground and looking bemused.

“What?”  _ Innocence, Smoak, innocence _ .

“The computer.”

“Oh, that,” she looked away, blushing. “That’s nothing, that’s just...Iron Heights. And, yep, they’ve lost another one.”

“Another prisoner?” Diggle was incredulous.

“Yeah, after the Dollmaker incident, I decided they needed a little civilian oversight, if you know what I mean.”

“You hacked into a prison system network?” Oliver asked, rather pointedly.

Felicity lifted her chin and met his eyes over the monitor. She was prepared for almost anything, except for the proud smile that bloomed across his face. Blushing harder, she looked down at her keyboard and felt an unusually bright smile of her own. It was definitely pride she saw.

“There’s a BOLO out for everyone’s least favorite Wolverine LARPer.” Incredulity again from the boys. “Logan? The X-man? With the snikt?”

“We know who Wolverine is, Felicity.” John was definitely laughing at her now.

“Oh, the prisoner. The prisoner is Ben Turner.”

“Turner escaped?”

“Killed ten guards on his way out.”

“You’d think that would have made the news.”

“Which is exactly why I’m eavesdropping on them.”

“Any idea where he’s headed?”

“Um, no.”

“Get one.” And Oliver sounded confident that she could.

 

* * *

 

“What was he there to steal? Merlyn’s art collection?”

“Something much more dangerous. A prototype earthquake machine.”

Felicity felt nothing--absolutely nothing at first. And then it all flooded back into her, the tunnel, the countdown, Detective Lance’s voice in her ear, and then the shaking. The tunnel, the countdown, the voice, the shaking. The tunnel, the countdown, the voice the shaking.  _ The car, the car, the car _ .

“Breathe, Felicity. Put your head down.”

There was a warm hand on her back--it was the only thing she could feel besides  _ the car, the car, the car _ .

“She has pills, John.”

“I’m on it.”

“I didn’t mean… Should we--is there a syringe of something?”

“No, it’s okay. She’s got this. Give her a minute.” Digg came into her field of vision, shaking a pill out into his hand. “Felicity, let’s do Three Things.”

Her head nodded on its own.

“Three Things,” Digg repeated.

“I see John,” she said hoarsely. “I see John’s face.”

“One,” Digg said.

“I hear the bass. I hear the bass from the club.”

“Two,” Digg said.

“I feel Oliver’s hand. It’s on my back.” It was moving clockwise in a calm circle.

“Three.”

“I see John. I hear music. I feel Oliver.”

“Again.”

“I see John. I hear music. I feel Oliver.” Then she took a great, deep, shuddering breath.

“Good work.” Diggle handed her the pill and she swallowed it dry. “Again?”

“John. Music. Oliver’s hand.”

“Again?”

“No, it’s okay. I’m okay.” She pulled off her glasses and covered her face, mortified. This hadn’t happened in months. “I’m sorry. I just got scared for a second.”

“It’s okay to be scared,” John said.

Oliver’s hand just kept moving on her back, a steady pressure that felt like it held her down into the chair. Immutable and comforting as gravity.

“Just...keep going. About the thing.”

“Are you sure?” Oliver asked.

“Yes. Keep going.” It was the only way she thought she might recover from the shame.

“I have a watch,” he said, strangely hesitant. “From one of the guys Turner was working with. I was thinking, maybe Barry’s kit?”

“Fingerprints,” she said. “Fingerprints I can do.”

 

* * *

 

“You didn’t hit your head again, did you?”

“No,” Oliver groaned. “But I think I hit everything else.”

“Did you break anything? You know, there’s a hairline in a couple of our ribs.”

He stretched tentatively, shifting his shoulder side to side, front to back. “I don’t think so.”

“I am getting us an x-ray and that’s final. It is no longer up for discussion. ‘I don’t think so’ is not good enough for internal organs.” She cracked open a couple cold packs and handed them off.

“No arguments from me,” Diggle said.

“Where are we with the fingerprint?” Grimacing, Oliver held the ice to the junction of his neck and shoulder.

“Nothing in the States. I’m searching abroad now.”

“Oliver, I know you’ve taken Roy on, and why,” Digg said cautiously. “But, Roy, Slade, a lot of guys I served with… Some people are just broken, man.”

“Roy is not broken!” Felicity snapped. “He’s not like you two, but that doesn’t mean he’s broken!”

Digg and Oliver exchanged a look. Maybe she’d been a little louder than she intended.

“Never mind.”

“No, I want to know.” Oliver stepped up and crossed his arms, genuinely curious. "What do you mean he's not like us?"

“Okay, um.” Felicity took a deep breath. “Children who form healthy attachments with caregivers, children whose parents love them, they develop a capacity for self-regulation. They can monitor and control their behavior and feelings and impulses. Children who don’t form healthy attachments, or whose attachment is what we call disorganized, they don’t develop that capacity the way they should.”

Oliver raised his eyebrows.

“When you can’t control your own feelings and impulses--not won’t but when you  _ can’t _ \--then you start trying to self-regulate in other ways. Violence, drugs, etc. He was doing so well. He has a job, structure, a wonderful girlfriend who loves him.”

“And then mirakuru,” John said.

“Right. And now every coping mechanism, every learned behavior, every relationship--none of those work anymore. He’s coming unraveled and he doesn’t understand why.” It was completely irrelevant that her voice was quavering.  Oliver, he doesn’t need to be taught. He needs a teacher.”

“I’m not letting what happened to Slade happen to Roy.” Oliver looked at her steadily. “I’m not.”

Between them, on the table, his phone buzzed--Thea. Quite unwilling, Felicity now found herself with a front row seat to Laurel Lance’s very personal disaster. Her computer beeped at her again--a hit on the fingerprint, but Felicity refused to go upstairs to the club. Digg could read the body language as well as she could. Laurel was drunk, belligerent, and effectively evicted. It was hard to watch and the question dogged her: If Laurel stone-cold-attorney-at-law could lose her shit so spectacularly, what hope was there for the rest of them?

 

* * *

 

She was irrigating the neat, parallel stab wounds in Oliver shoulder (he was pretending not to notice) when she thought it:  _ He should have killed that bastard the first time around _ . Very quickly, Felicity tied that thought up with a neat bow and set it away. That was a path she could not go down.

“You will take a full course of antibiotics this time,” she said firmly. “Drink all the nasty tea you want, but I want penicillin on your side. These are deep--they’re going to drain for a while. Red is good, clear is good, anything else is bad. I will be checking them every night. No salmon ladder for now, more’s the pity.”

“Where’s Roy now?” Digg asked, ignoring her.

“He’s, uh...processing.”

Felicity snorted. “He’s probably processing a bottle tequila.”

“Are you worried that Roy could be a loose cannon now that he knows your secret?”

“No,” she said, like Digg had been asking her and not Oliver. “Roy Harper is not a snitch.”

“I believe you,” Oliver said. “And I wasn’t thinking about the consequences. On the island, Sara told me that love is the most powerful emotion. The Arrow couldn’t get Roy to think about Thea. But I could.”

 

* * *

 

“Is this the part where you kill me ‘cause I know your secret?” 

Roy’s voice echoed around the batcave and Felicity felt her heart rate pick up. She hadn’t considered how much Oliver’s secret had become her secret, too. But now Roy was coming into the fold and he knew her better and longer than Oliver or Digg. She’d x-rayed his hand at the clinic after a bar brawl and given him a tetanus shot when he gashed his leg open on a rusty chain link fence, fleeing the scene of who knows what. Until the quake, she had foisted condoms on him at every opportunity.

“How many people know what--who you are?”

“Too many, but these are the only two who matter: John Diggle and Felicity Smoak.”

She waited very patiently for Diggle and Roy to share a very manful handshake before she threw her arms around him and squeezed like hell.

“I’m so happy you’re here!” she whispered.

“Me, too,” Roy whispered back.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bodies never lie.  
> -Agnes de Mille

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't get your medical advice from google, kids.

_ Bodies never lie _ .

-Agnes de Mille

 

**Starling, 2014**

Felicity was not a math genius. She wasn’t bad at it, but she’d never had the discipline to get really good at it, either. But even she could count to forty. She’d counted to forty several times already today. So what was one more time, really? Even as the tension knotted her shoulders, she scrolled the online calendar back again to Thea’s birthday. One week, two, three, four…

Behind her, Sara was doing some compulsive repetition of her own. Watching her work the salmon ladder wasn’t as...exciting as when Oliver did it, but it was still an impressive feat. Felicity knew she had a good body, especially considering what she’d put it through over the last year. Sure, she didn’t have enough bust to fill a B-cup, but she had an ass that wouldn’t quit and she knew how to use it. Sara, on the other hand, looked like someone had knit her together out of whipcord and pulled it tight. 

Above them, the Verdant door opened she watched Oliver come downstairs, his eyes on the salmon ladder all the way. Felicity realized that she was at one remove again, watching Oliver watch Sara. It wasn’t a bad feeling, just a kind of deja vu.

“She’s been doing that for like an hour,” Felicity said, quickly closing the browser window with her calendar. It was ridiculous. Forty weeks was forty weeks.

“You saw Laurel,” Sara said, dropping from the ladder. “Is she going to be okay?”

“You saved her life.”

“Thanks for calling me.” Sara smiled. “Hey, I never did ask you--how did you find me?”

Felicity coughed and spun around in her chair, trying to assemble a poker face.

“I wasn’t going to lose you again,” Oliver said.

“I should get going.” Sara was clearly ready to bolt. Felicity could sympathize.

“Hey, so that’s it? You’re back in town for 24 hours, now you’re just going to take off again?”

“The League of Assassins is still after me, Ollie, and staying in town would put my whole family at risk. I only came because Laurel’s in trouble.”

In trouble, that was the understatement of the year. Felicity kept her back turned, so they couldn’t see her grimace. But families were complicated. 

“Well, she’s still in trouble, Sara. Your entire family needs you. So do I.”

This was what Felicity would never understand. Who was Oliver before, when he was Ollie, that so many people were willing to say no to him? Felicity couldn’t. Not just because he was scary, but because he was...Oliver. She had met of course met him briefly as Ollie in Vegas. But even then, rolling out of his noggin… Well. It would have been hard for her to walk away.

“Do me a favor and dig up a copy of Laurel’s bloodwork from the hospital please?”   


“Already done.”  _ He said please? Should I ask if he’s okay? _ “I yoinked her whole chart. Bless Starling General--their medical records are fully digital. We’re still slumming it on paper. What am I looking for?”

“I want you take a hard look at her tox screen.”

“You know I’m not going to tell you a damn thing that’s not 100% Team Arrow business.”

“I know and I’m sure. And stop calling it that.”

“Sure. Uh-oh.” Felicity’s phone was buzzing.The Caller ID was a picture of bacon and read this THIS LITTLE PIGGY. “It’s for you.”

 

* * *

 

_ Their medical records are fully digital _ . This was a new line to cross: breaking not just laws but professional ethics. Thea, Moira, and Oliver had all been seen at Starling general in the last year. She now knew as much about them as their own physicians and there was no going back now. She had a duty of confidentiality to the patient. But Moira and Thea were not her patients. Oliver often was. Still, her responsibility was to protect that privacy. Also, he would hate her.

“Felicity.”

Could she live with him hating her? That was the question. 

“Felicity.”

She couldn’t. But she might have to. But what about hating herself? That was a lot of promises to break. And some oaths, to.

There was a hand on her shoulder, alerting her without startling. She looked up into Oliver’s face. He had that look he got when he was trying out new trick arrows and he wasn’t sure if they were balanced right.

“What? Sorry. What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Peachy. Do you know what your blood type is?”

“Yeah. AB negative.”

“It’s really rare. It’s the rarest.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I self-donate.”

“Of course. Right.” Felicity laced her fingers together and gripped tight. “Do you know what Thea’s blood type is?”

“No.”

“Mmmm.”

Oliver tilted his head and looked at her. She stared back, wishing mind control was real and she could just beam her thoughts straight at him. No, that was probably a violation of some other ethical code. No turning your patients into meat puppets. 

“The League is never going to let me go,” Sara said. “At least if I’m halfway around the world, then I can keep my family safe.”

“No, you can’t,” Felicity said baldly. This, at least, was something she could speak about with confidence. “Listen, I’ve looked through Laurel’s chart. She was drunk as a boiled owl, but she wasn’t on pills that night.”

“It was alcohol poisoning?” Digg asked.

“No, her BAC wasn’t high enough to cause the respiratory distress that Sara described. They always say when you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. But buckle up, because this is a real life zebra. It’s Tibetan pit viper venom.”

“Laurel didn’t OD?” Sara looked confused and a little scared.

“No,” Felicity confirmed. “She was poisoned in an extremely specific way.”

“She poisoned by Nyssa," Oliver said.

 

* * *

 

Felicity opened her second beer of the afternoon and paced the floor of her studio. She would be very surprised if the fake hardwood didn’t have a rut worn into it by the time she moved out. After consulting google, she was pretty certain she needed actual legal advice. Of course, speaking this aloud to anyone but Team Arrow was unthinkable. No one could know. Except for Oliver and Digg. Her stomach hurt and she considered that she might actually be getting an ulcer. The beer wouldn’t help, but fuck it. Nothing would help until she let this rabid cat out of the bag.

Someone knocked at the door. She opened it to admit Business Formal Oliver, in a beautifully cut gray suit. It wasn’t fair that someone so pretty could afford clothes so nice.

“Are you drinking beer?” he asked, glancing at the broad daylight coming in through the window.

“I worked a double, okay?” she said defensively. “I’m going to crash after this anyway. Don’t worry, I’ll be on time for the swing shift.”

“What is going on with you. And don’t say--”

“Nothing.”

“...nothing.” He glowered.

“Listen,” she took a drink. “I’m about to do something that could get my license taken away if anyone knew. Also, I think it might get me killed.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“I’m about to be.”

“Felicity.”

“You have to swear to me,” she said intently. “Swear on...on Tommy’s grave. That you will never tell anyone how you found out about what I’m going to tell you. You can never reveal your source.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“There are rules about this, that I am breaking. So I need you to swear. Swear!”

“I swear. I will never tell anyone how I found out.”

“Especially your mother.”

“Especially my--what?”

“Listen, Oliver, I get that she’s your mom and you love her. But for the rest of us, she’s still the woman who was willing to watch the city burn. Making a single Glades Memorial resident wouldn't even make her miss Pilates.”

He was silent for a moment. “I swear to never tell anyone, especially my mother.”

“On Tommy’s grave.” She was feeling a little loose with beer and fatigue, but she knew exactly what she wanted.

“On Tommy’s grave,” he affirmed.

“Oliver, what…” Felicity stopped, swallowed. “You may have noticed that I talk a lot.”

“It has not escaped my attention.” He was smiling, blissfully unaware that she was going to ruin everything. “I have to be downtown soon, for--”

“You might have also noticed that I don’t talk a lot about my family.”

“I have noticed that.”

“Well, it’s because I don’t have any.” Sentimentality never helped in these conversations. “Your mother terrifies me, Oliver, but I would do anything, well, almost anything, to have family in my life like that again. I’m going to tell you something, but I don’t want you to… When my family… I would rather die than do that again.”

“You won’t have to.” He looked concerned now. “Is this about your family?”

“What blood type is your sister?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Because I flagged the bank accounts of everyone in the entire Queen family orbit and your mother has transferred one million dollars to the obstetrician who delivered Thea so I started drilling down on that and it turns out your sister nearly died at birth.”

“Yeah, she was born premature.”

“No, Oliver, she wasn’t. Premature babies don’t weigh in at nine pounds. But Rh incompatibility can result in infant hemolytic anemia, even in a first pregnancy. ”

“This time in English.”

“You and your mother are both AB negative. Your father was A negative. Thea is O positive.”

“I said, in English.” He was getting aggravated.

“Robert Queen isn’t Thea’s father.” There it was out. “An AB and an A cannot have an O baby. Your mother’s OB had no reason to suspect that the pregnancy was at any risk of Rh incompatibility until the birth. Thea was born full term and unless your mother has even more skeletons in her closet, her father is Malcolm Merlyn.”

“No.” He shook his head, but she could see the moment that her words landed. 

“Without DNA, I can’t prove that Malcolm is her father, but the blood type and the timing of the pregnancy are very suggestive. However, I can conclusively say that Robert Queen is not her biological father. It’s a genetic impossibility.”

He turned his back on her and walked towards her door.

“Oliver, I’m sorry. Oliver?”

The door shut behind him. And, yep, there it was, she definitely hated herself.

 

* * *

 

“Oliver, I hate to sound cold, but why do we care if Sara kills some badass assassin that wants to get her and her family?”

Felicity stared at Diggle. Was he serious? Were they not getting it? She’d gotten a few hours of sleep after dispensing her unwelcome news and finishing her beer, but it wasn’t what you’d call restful. So she really was not sure if these boys were as dumb as they currently looked.

“Because,” Oliver said. “If half of the stories that I have heard about Ra’s al Ghul are true… We will all pay.”

“Oh my effing Lord.” Felicity was unable to stop herself-it just burst out.

Diggle was taken aback and Oliver looked actually offended.

“Sara has been on the run for who knows how long, living out of a backpack and dodging bullets, just to make sure that her family can implode in peace! I mean…” She gaped, like a landed fish, and pressed a syringe into Oliver’s hands.

“What’s this?”

“It’s anti-venom. Watch out for serum sickness. And before you ask, yes, I still have all kinds of shady contacts and, no, I’m not afraid to use them. It’s black market, but it’s legit.”

The boys traded a lock as Oliver grabbed his favorite pouch of allegedly medicinal weeds. It was true. Men were really that dense. 

“Go! Sara’s not going to kill Nyssa, you morons, she’s going to kill herself!”

As soon as they were gone, Felicity put her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands. She’d spent almost a decade of her life studying medicine and feeling like she didn’t know jack. For the first time since high school, she was getting the feeling that she knew too far, far too much.


	14. Chapter 14

_He was part of a whole, a people scattered over the earth and yet eternally one and indivisible. Wherever a Jew lived, in whatever safety and isolation, he still belonged to his people._

-Pearl S. Buck

 

 **Starling, 2014**  


Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi.

@DELPHI: This sounds dire.

They’re asking me techy questions again

@DELPHI: That’s because you’re the tech.

Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor not a programmer.

@DELPHI: Wait, are you Leia or are you McCoy today?

I do what I want.

Hey.

WTF is a skeleton key?

@DELPHI: Oh no.

Don’t say that.

Please don’t say that.

@DELPHI: Do you have an encrypted landline?

Is LINUX superior?

@DELPHI: Will call in five.

 

* * *

 

Wintry mix was the worst kind of Starling weather. Not only was it as dangerous as snow and sleet, it made all her broken parts ache worse than any other kind of precipitation. After a full day of splinting and x-raying slip and falls at Glades Memorial, with a fun side of digits lost to frostbite, Felicity limped her bike over to Verdant, where she struggled to lift it up the three stairs to the back hallway. No way was she taking it any farther. Digg could put his brawn to good use and move it later.

She leaned heavily on the stair railing and carefully made her way down to the lair. Pausing only to grab a tube of Icy Hot, she threw herself onto the softer training mat and groaned. It was a good thing she had worn her BoSox hoodie and yoga pants into work today. They were much easier to roll up than real clothes. She peeled off her socks and tried to ignore how long her leg hair was. She’d shave again eventually. In the summer, maybe. Icy Hot on her bum ankle and wrist and arm was the kind of pleasure she thought she wouldn’t get to experience until her sixties at least. But no, here she was, starfished on the training mat and reeking of menthol.

“Are you okay? Can I get you an Advil?” Sara asked, from somewhere above her.

“Already took one,” Felicity, eyes still closed.

“Did you sprain it?” There was a dip in the mat as Sara sat down beside her.

“No, not exactly. I got a little banged up in the quake. This whole weather changing thing is for the birds.”

“May I? There’s an acupressure point right around here… How does that feel?”

“Ohhhhhhh,” Felicity moaned. “Don’t stop. Oh my G-d. Please. Right there. Right there.”

“Where are we with the skeleton key?” Oliver asked, blowing into the lair. “What...are you doing?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly, cutting her eyes to Sara. “Stretching after work. That’s all.”

“The key?”

“Right.” Felicity climbed to her feet, carefully, and made her way to the desk, careful not to limp.

“Where are your shoes?” he asked.

“Anyway,” she said, cutting that line of questioning off at the pass. “Or...Our friend is cross-referencing Walczak’s KAs, from Lance, with her own list of shady cryptographers, but it’s taking some time.”

“Which we don’t have,” he said irritably. “Okay, the key is not just a code breaker. In the wrong hands, it’s a weapon.”

“Yes, I’m aware. But this schmuck is a pro.”

“Lucky for us, so are you.”

Felicity gave him the best side-eye she could muster. Under the circumstances, she thought it was pretty good.

 

* * *

 

I need a pep talk.

@DELPHI: Kind of in the middle of something.

Okay.

@DELPHI: Vigilante problems of my own today. Standby.

Carry on.

 

* * *

 

“What do we know?”

Well, it was good to see that her little revelation about Thea’s parentage hadn’t made him hate her, just the world at large. Although maybe that’s what this was. Him hating her, a little bit. She could understand that.

“Well. He hacked us. But I used some of your darkest dark money and upgraded our firewall. He’d need a bonesaw and a ribspreader to get in now.”

“Good.”

Damnation by faint praise. The new flavor of Oliver Queen.

“I think I have something that might help us track him down,” Sara said, producing a slide of their suspect’s blood, retrieved from her staff.

“Oh!” Finally, something Felicity was actually qualified for. “I’ll have a look.”

“I spent a year on the freighter studying genetic blood anomalies,” Sara said breezily. “I kind of know my way around a microscope. Felicity, can I use your computer?”

Ass-kicking, acupressure, and now pathology. Fantastic. _Reel it in, Smoak. Reel. It. In._

“Of course.”

“MacGregor’s syndrome. It’s a genetic defect that creates fluid build-up in the lungs, which leads to oxygen deprivation and multi-system organ failure.”

Oh, the hell with reeling it in. She was going to go home and put Veronica Mars back on and the hell with all of these people. Digg, who was a little more clued in, crossed over to sit by her as she typed furiously.

“It’s terminal,” Sara was saying.

“William Tockman,” Felicity announced flatly. “Formerly of Kord Enterprises.”

“What’s the point?”Digg aske. “He’ll be dead before he can spend the money.”

“It bet it’s not for him,” Felicity guessed, combing social media and coming up with the world’s most depression GoFundMe page. “His sister has cystic fibrosis--which, talk about winning the worst lottery twice in one family--she needs a lung transplant.”

“Give me an address, please.”

An hour later, all her YouTube tutorials, all her autodidactic coding, everything Oracle had helped her build, it was all up in smoke. Literally.  She was not going home to Veronica Mars. Do not pass go. Do not collect Season 3.

“What can I do?” Sara asked.

 _If she says she learned electrical engineering in Nanda Parbat, I’m going to self-immolate_.

“Nothing,” Felicity said, instead of what she was thinking. “Go to your dinner. Your family’s probably waiting on you.”

Oh right, she had a family, too. Two parents who loved her. _Keep it together, Smoak. Just a couple more minutes_.

When Sara invited Oliver to Lance family dinner, Felicity and Diggle shared A Look. Oliver, obviously, could keep a secret. But he and Sara had been making sex eyes at each other all week. It was not subtle and one of them was going to give the game away. Felicity widened her eyes, but Diggle shook his head. Mum’s the word.

“I should probably stay here.”

“Ollie,” Sara pleaded.

“Call if you need us,” Oliver said.

“Yep,” Diggle replied, as the other two left. He looked down at the awkward way she was sitting, trying to make her bad ankle comfortable. “Do you want a pillow? That can’t be comfortable.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He returned with a foam roller to prop up the ankle and a yoga mat to fold and wedge under her butt to help her sit more upright.

“Thanks, Digg.” It really did feel better.

“You know I got you. This isn’t your fault, you know.”

“Sorry, which server tower did you build?”

“I know we’ve...avoided talking about this. But if you’re having a hard time seeing them, together--”

“Oh, this is so not about them. It’s definitely about me this time. She fights, she does labwork, I bet assassin school left her great at first aid. Which is great, I’m not knocking that, but. It’s dumb. But. I’m feeling...dispensable.”

“You’re irreplaceable, Felicity.”

“He didn’t invite me, Digg.”

Digg, bless him, looked confused.

“He threw a welcome back party for her. I know he couldn’t invite you, for your cover, but you still got to be there as you. He invited Roy. And Sin--who, by the way, doesn’t even return my texts since Sara got back in town. And sure, I’m terrified of his mother. And sure, I just tossed an armed family secret into his lap. But he didn’t invite me. I was here. Alone. And when I called to tell him about the robbery, he already knew.”

Oh crap, now he was actually looking a little sorry for her.

“So yeah. A little dispensable. And I have a lot of work to do.”

 

* * *

 

@DELPHI: Sorry about that. They’re the worst.

Which one?

@DELPHI: All of them. They’re all the worst.

I think I’m the worst.

@DELPHI: As if. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

The bastards have a friend in town and she’s great.

But it’s getting kind of crowded down here.

@DELPHI: Friends come and go.

@DELPHI: You’re their eye in the sky.

@DELPHI: Never forget it.

Thanks.

I want to blow something up.

Will you help me blow something up?

@DELPHI: Always.

 

* * *

 

Felicity sat, legs outstretched, in front of the safe deposit room at Starling National, and typed furiously on her laptop. That, at least, had been mercifully unconnected and unplugged at the type of the lair’s computer suicide. Sure it had taken a couple hours, and several calls to her mentor in Gotham, but now she was ready. She picked up her phone and made the call

“Hey,” Oliver said.

“Tockman took your bait,” she said. “He’s on his way to Starling National.”

“Wait--where are you? How do you know that?”

“Would you believe I’m using the WiFi at Jitters?”

“I would not,” he growled.

“Well, you’d be right, because I’m here.”

“Here where?”

“The bank, Oliver. The bank.”

“What?”

It was low and petty, but it felt good to hear a little outrage in his voice. It was probably good for him to express a human emotion now and then. She was tracking her friends, too, so she wasn’t startled when Diggle appeared, looking surprisingly unamused, to hold her laptop and help her back to her feet.

“What are you doing here?” the Hood asked.

“Opening an account,” she said dryly. “Our system’s fried. There was no way I could resuscitate it in time. So I borrowed the bank’s.

“And the gun?” Sara asked, nodding towards the PPK (safety on) tucked into the waistband of her yoga pants.

“I have a license.”

“Diggle, get her out of here.”

Before Felicity could dignify that particular utterance with a reply, the alarm was going off. Get her out of here, indeed.

“He turned off security, but I turned it back on. He’s here. And those goons are blocking our way out.”

“I’ll deal with them.” Oliver stalked off to put an arrow in someone. Maybe it would improve his attitude.

“He’s close,” Felicity said, taking the laptop back from Digg.

“Find him.”

“No need,” said a disembodied voice. “I’ll tell you exactly where I am. I’m everywhere.”

“What Dr. Evil bullshit,” Felicity muttered, making Sara snort.

“The gas mains, specifically,” Tockman said.

“Frak,” Felicity said. “Digg, he shut down the main gas release.”

“I’m on it,” he said, off like a shot.

“Got you now, dillhole,” Felicity grinned. “I spent the whole summer flat on my back with my hands on this city.”

“Say what?” Sara asked.

“He’s playing in my sandbox now.”

“Now that I understood.”

“What’s happening?” There was really no time to answer Oliver, even though Felicity knew that would tweak him.

Sara was chasing Tockman flat out and Felicity was hustling behind Sara, equally afraid of being left behind to fend for herself and running into more trouble ahead. She was following her around a turn when her ankle pinched and then abruptly gave way under her. Felicity hit the deck, breaking her fall with her better hand and holding the tablet safe with the other, focused on protecting Oracle’s program. But she must have made some noise, because Sara turned back for her. That was when Felicity saw Tockman pull his gun and aim for the back of Sara’s head.

“Shit!” Felicity planted her good foot on the floor and launched herself into what had to be the world’s saddest tackle. But it worked--in the sense that no one got shot in the head. There was a weird burning feeling on Felicity’s shoulder that indicated maybe someone had been shot a little bit after all. Sara hopped right back up, but Felicity was just fine on the floor thank you very much.

“You don’t even know why I’m doing this! The money’s not for me! I’m doing this all for her!”

“Doesn’t make it right,” Sara yelled back, putting her body between Felicity and Tockman. Felicity pulled the tablet out from under her and struggled with the unlock screen. Why had she insisted on a damn unlock screen?

“Tempus fugit!” he yelled.

“Hannibal ad portas!” Felicity yelled back and tapped her tablet. Oh, she definitely should have worn a GoPro for this. Oracle had wanted her to and it would have been worth it to watch Tockman be remotely tasered.

“What the hell was that?” Sara asked.

“Latin.”

“I meant with Tockman.”

“Shit--is he dead? Did I kill somebody?”

“No, you didn’t. He’s just knocked out.”

“You’re sure? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

“Scout’s honor.”

“Oh good.”

“So how’d you zap him?”

“Well, a friend helped me turn his exploding virus around on his cell phone. Hoist on his own petard.”

“What happened?” Oliver yelled.

“We did it!” Felicity gave him a weak thumbs up.

“She’s been shot,” Sara said.

“Oh don’t tell him that,” Felicity muttered. “He’s going to come unglued.”

“Where is she hit?” The Hood dropped to his knees beside her like it was an outtake of Private Ryan.

“On her back.”

“I’m sitting right here. It hurts, but it’s not deep. I can move all the important parts.”

“What happened?” Diggle appeared behind Oliver.

“Oh good. Another one.”

“She’s been shot,” Oliver said.

“Where is she hit?” Diggle crouched beside them.

“On her back.”

“I’m sorry--raise your hand if you’re a doctor? Oh look! It’s me! I’m the doctor!”

“It’s just a flesh wound.”

“Are you sure?”

“We have to take her to the hospital.”

“Oliver, you cannot take me to the hospital with a GSW.”

“They can examine her there.”

“I can stitch her up.”

“They can do a full exam at the Starling General. Where we are taking her.”

“Oliver! You can have me here, you can have me there, you can have me anywhere but an accredited hospital required by law to report gunshot wounds to the proper authorities. In addition to blowing, like, all of your covers, I will once again be the sad girl that bad things happen to for no reason.”

The three vigilantes fell silent traded looks. Felicity thought she could feel the thoughts flying back and forth between them, but not read them.

“In the meantime,” she said. “My ankle might actually be a little busted, so if one of you ridiculously built gentleman would oblige?”

That decided it. And a good thing, too, because she couldn’t have actually stopped any one of them, much less all three, from bodily delivering her to a real ER. It was Oliver who moved first, boxing Diggle out for the apparent privilege of carrying her back to the panel van. He sat with her in the back, too applying gentle pressure against the sore part of her back and holding her firmly against him. Once again, Felicity was having some very unmedical thoughts about his torso again.

_He’s shtupping a superhero, Smoak. Get it together._

Digg was driving the van and Sara was riding the bike back to the lair, so there was no one there to overhear them talk, if they were quiet. And they were.

“Felicity,” Oliver said, close enough to her ear to raise goosebumps all over her body. “Diggle had mentioned earlier that maybe you were feeling...a little left out.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s just my particular neuroses talking.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I just…” She sighed. “I got used to being your girl Friday.”

“I thought it was Wednesday.”

“No, Oliver. You need to watch a movie sometime. I mean, I know you have a lot going on, but--”

“Hey,” he gave her a gentle squeeze. “You will always be my girl.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” he whispered as the van stopped. Diggle held his arms out, but Oliver was the one to carry her down the stairs and prop her up on a table. Dispassionately, he reached for the hem of her sweatshirt.

“Wait!” she squeaked, suddenly aware. “I don’t…”

Oliver’s brow furrowed, hands still on her shirt. Behind him, Diggle raised one very expressive eyebrow.

“Um.”

“Ollie!” Sara appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “We’ve talked about taking girls’ shirts off before. Is this a frat house?”

Suddenly aware that he was attempting to disrobe his personal physician and pseudo-techie, Oliver quickly backed away. For once, he was the one blushing.

“Let me take a look,” Sara said, all business.

“I don’t want Oliver to see,” Felicity murmured, overwhelmed with gratitude that Sara was, indeed, fluent in first aid.

“I’ll take care of it,” Sara said. And she did. She didn’t know how to administer a local--apparently badass assassins really didn’t believe in them--but everything else went just fine. Felicity held a sheet over her chest and middle with one hand, hiding them in case one of the boys were to turn around before she was ready.

“Thanks.”

“I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been so brave. So thank you. And don’t worry, it missed your ink.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I loved this hoodie,” Felicity said sadly, turning the BoSox 2007 World Series material over in her hands.

“I’ll buy you another hoodie,” Oliver growled.

“I said I loved _this_ hoodie.”

“I can patch it,” Sara said. “I’ve gotten pretty good at getting bloodstains out.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s freezing out here. Can I come in?”
> 
> “I should leave you out there, you know that.” She pushed the window sash a little higher to accommodate his mass. “What were you thinking?”
> 
> “I was not thinking that you’d be waiting for me with a German pistol.”
> 
> “Joke’s on you, then.”

_ The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for _ .

-Bob Marley

 

**Las Vegas, 2003**

When Fetter Duvid had discovered that she was having the dream almost nightly, that she was sometimes unable to speak in school, that she was...well. He made her go to a therapist. He made her go to several and every time she got into the car, voiceless, and gave him a thumbs down. Until they got to Dr. Sauer, a bonafide psychiatrist. She was an impossibly composed, effortlessly chic woman somewhere indeterminable north of forty. She had comfortable wingback chairs, an unimposing office, and a legit German accent. No false warmth, no put on sympathy, and a brilliant mind. Everything about her screamed competence.

Instead of asking Felicity how she felt, Dr. Sauer explained what was happening inside Felicity’s brain. The doctor showed her a 3-D model, pointing to the parts that were fired up too much (amygdala) and not enough (cingulate). She had a life-size map of the nervous system throughout the whole body. It was the first time someone had done that for Felicity, helped her step back and look from the outside in.

Felicity still didn’t feel like talking when she got in the car, but Dr. Sauer got the thumbs up.

Dr. Sauer talked with her like that for several sessions, gradually teaching Felicity how to find her feelings and what to think and what to think about what she felt. They played a game where Felicity had to sit still, with both feet on the floor, and described the feeling that each part of her body had in that moment. Feet, nervous; legs, worried; belly, anxious; chest, hopeful; arms, excited; head, afraid. They played a game where Felicity tried to tell her mom and dad what she missed about them. They played the Three Things game.

In a meeting with Fetter, Dr. Sauer explained how an SSRI could help, and Felicity started Prozac. It wasn’t magic, but it made it easier to wake up in the morning and talk in school, even if it was only a little. She knew, because Dr. Sauer had told her, that the patterns in her brain would never go away entirely. Dr. Sauer tried to prepare her for that, for the things that would go wrong, the things that might go wrong, and the remote but real possibility that meant Felicity might have to someday check herself into a psych hospital before she killed herself.

And because it was clinical and logical and true, Felicity wasn’t afraid of it anymore.

  
  


**Starling, 2014**

“Don’t shoot!” Diggle yelled.

“Oh my G-d!” Felicity yelled back, immediately pointing her gun down and away. “I could have killed you!”

“Jesus, woman, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

“You? You? I’m the one who thought she had an enormous prowler on her fire escape at five am! Oh, wait, I did! I did have an enormous prowler on my fire escape.”

“It’s freezing out here. Can I come in?”

“I should leave you out there, you know that.” She pushed the window sash a little higher to accommodate his mass. “What were you thinking?”

“I was not thinking that you’d be waiting for me with a German pistol.”

“Joke’s on you, then.” Felicity pushed her hair out of her face, her fear sweat receding. “You want some coffee?”

“Sure. How long have you been awake?”

“Since I heard you scaling the side of the building.”

“How’d you know to approach the window like that?”

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what were you doing on my fire escape?”

“Keeping an eye on things.”

“Oh, moved onto voyeurism, have we? I didn’t think I was your type.”

“Felicity.” Diggle sighed. “I have extra security on Moira. Sara’s on Laurel. Roy’s on Thea.”

“I’ll say.”

“Felicity.”

“I don’t like feeling stalked, Diggle. And you and I both know that if Slade Wilson wants to make time to kill me, he can and he will. There’s nothing we can do about it. So go home.”

“Nice jammies, by the way,” he said.

Felicity looked down to see that her nightgown, once only threadbare, was now officially see through. Voyeurism indeed.

 

* * *

 

The thing about the dream, was that she knew it wasn’t real, but she was still terrified that it was real. In the dream, she already knew that her parents were going to die, and how. But she had to relive some mundane experience with them, like going to the mall with her mom, or watching baseball with her dad. And all the while, she experienced a dread so profound that she often woke up crying.

Smell was widely regarded as the sense most strongly linked to memory. But for her, in the dream at least, it was sound. She was usually sitting in her room, packing her butterfly bag for the stupid sleepover. She could hear her mom getting frustrated and afraid, dropping her lipstick and mascara onto the bathroom counter, rather than setting them down.  _ Clink, chunk, clatter _ . She could hear her father’s raised voice.  _ Trashy, cheap, disgusting _ . And all the while, little Felicity walked slowly to the front door, leaving the noise behind her, knowing exactly what she would come back to in the morning.

Felicity flew upright in bed, gasping, and wiped furiously at her eyes. She scrambled off the mattress, like she could leave it behind there. Stripping off her t-shirt, she went straight into a cold shower where she played Three Things until she didn’t want to puke anymore. Now she was, of course, freezing. Felicity pulled on some sweats that she’d purloined from the lair. And if just happened to be Oliver’s, so what. It’s not like he would miss them.

Appropriately bundled up in his--her clothes, she crawled into the papasan chair that was her only real piece of furniture and turned on the TV.  Veronica Mars wasn’t going to cut it tonight. Felicity needed the big guns. A few taps of the remote later and the opening swell of “Orchard House” filled her studio. 

“We’ll all grow up one day, Meg,” Kirsten-Dunst-as-Amy said. “We might as well know what we want.”

 

* * *

 

“Who is she?”

“Oliver’s ex-girlfriend who fights like Little Lord Fauntleroy,” Felicity smirked. It was hard not to feel smug about having kicked Helena’s ass. Of course, that had been before she was run over by a truck. Still, the thought of using her trailer park tricks on Helena warmed the cockles of Felicity’s cold little  heart. There was still a place in this world for hair-pulling and eye-gouging.

“Ex-girlfriend?” Sara asked.

“That’s what you took from that sentence?” Oliver didn’t have the grace to even look embarrassed.

“Wait, why does she want her father dead so badly?”

“He killed Helena’s fiance in cold blood.”

“Puts the many fights I’ve had with my father in perspective.”

“I’ve been keeping track of her candy ass for the last two years,” Felicity said. “It hasn’t been hard. Just follow the trail of grotesque mafioso corpses. Latest corpse was a month ago on Palermo. She tried for the Colombian necktie, but couldn’t quite get the job done. It requires a certain knowledge of cranial anatomy that your average bloodthirsty bimbo doesn’t have.”

“You really don’t like her,” Sara noted.

“I don’t like people who try to scare me and can’t even get the job done.”

 

* * *

 

“Guess who’s back from the dead?” Felicity asked.

Looks of dread and mistrust crossed the team’s faces.

“Sorry. I forgot my audience. Um, it’s Michael Stratton.”

“The fiance?” Oliver asked. “He’s been dead for five years.”

“Then someone at Hertz rented a car to his fetch. Or his wight. I get those two confused. I doubt they’d rent to a zombie, but you never know.”

“That’s Helena.”

“And, shout to Hertz for their shitty GPS, I can tell you she’s currently headed north on I-5 headed straight for Starling.”   
  


 

* * *

 

 

“Lance called. Apparently, the kid who gave Helena a ride was some frosh from SAE who thought it was part of rush, which explains how he was dumb enough to pick up a hitchhiker, but not how he was smart enough to keep from attempting to rape her. Frat boys will do anything for a girl, as long as they think it’s a transaction that ends with sex.”

“I was a frat boy.”

“Four different chapters? Or did you try a new one at each school?”

“Ouch,” Sara said.

“Sorry. I slept like two hours last night.”

“It’s not like Helena to show restraint.”

“Sounds like you have a type.” Sara smirked in his general direction, which was part of the reason Felicity liked her so much.

Sara didn’t have any pretensions about what was what. She knew Ollie and she knew Oliver and she seemed to like both of them. She wasn’t fooled by any of his masks. Felicity admired that about her. That, and her stitches were really quite good. Felicity went back to work, typing quickly and straining to listen to Oliver and Roy’s conversation and h er blood boiled. This was going to be A Little Talk. Not in front of Roy, if she could avoid it, but so help her-- Right then, Felicity’s phone buzzed with a local news alert. She tapped to the live stream and...

“Oh balls.” This was all they needed. 

“Helena?”

“Guess who’s been called out of the bullpen to prosecute Bertinelli?”

“No,” Sara said.

Felicity turned the TV on and turned up the volume. Sara and Diggle were watching intently, neither looking pleased.

“Oliver,” she said. “A word?” Trying to keep her breath steady, she walked with him to a quieter spot in the basement.

“Yeah?” he said, resting his hands nonchalantly on his hips.

“I didn’t sleep and I’m cranky, but I’m going to try and be civil about this.” Felicity inhaled, exhaled. “No. Can’t do it. Sorry not sorry. What the fuck box of rocks is sliding around between your ears that you have the gall to use as brains?”

“Excuse me?” Oliver asked, in something dangerously like his Arrow voice.

“You heard me. What the hell do you mean, telling Roy those things.”

“Thea’s not safe around him.”

“Thea’s safer with him than without.”

“You don’t know that.”

“How much time can you spare for her, Oliver? I’m not criticizing--that’s a real question. Because Roy is brave and he’s strong and he spends every waking moment either with her or wanting to be with her. He’s never touched her in anger. And now, this kid, who has been through the fucking wringer, you want to take away the one person who makes him feel like an actual human being.”

“How I train Roy--”

“Did you ever tell Helena to break up with her boyfriend while you were training her?”

“That was different.”

“You’re right. Roy’s not a murderer.”

“He can’t be trusted with her.”

“This would be so much less frustrating if you weren’t projecting every last one of your issues onto him! I don’t blame you, you have plenty, and you come by them honestly. But Roy is not you.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Because so far you’ve tried to train him exactly the way you were trained. You assume that his lack of control mirrors your lack of control. And now you’re forcing him to push away the exact same people that you hold at arm’s distance.”

“Felicity,” he said, cold and low. “You want to be very careful about how you handle this conversation.”

“Or what? I’ll have to break up with someone, too?”

If looks could kill, she’d have like eight arrows in her chest.

“I am just looking out for Thea,” he ground out.

“And I am just looking out for Roy. Because somebody has to. If you do this to him--if you keep telling him how dangerous he is, how he can’t be close to anyone, he’s going to end up exactly where you were before you found Digg and me.”

“Oh yeah? And where’s that.”

“Alone. In pain. And killing.”

 

* * *

 

It was their night off, for the debate. Diggle would be patrolling, but due to the city-wide show of SCPD force, no one was expecting anything major. Felicity had just watched  _ Little Women _ again and decided to pop some kettlecorn and settle into her bed for the spectacle. She suspected both Moira and Blood were ruthlessly ambitious and unafraid, whatever the window dressing. The real question was which shark was for Glades and which one was out to get them. Felicity was pretty sure she knew, but when had her neighborhood been anything but screwed?

“Corporate profits are the stolen wages of the workers,” she lectured her television.

“...Now we have the next in our series of video questions submitted by Starling voters. This one come from Thea Queen. Okay, there must be some mistake.”

The bag popcorn dropped from Felicity’s hands as she saw Thea’s pale face appear. It wasn’t a mistake. This was all part of the plan.

“Help! Somebody, help me, please!”

Felicity was already out the door, flip flops slapping the stairs as she bolted for her bike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note about SAE: I went to UW in Seattle (aka Starling) and I lived behind Greek Row. SAE was known to stand for Sexual Assault Expected. I'm sure not all frat boys commit crimes against women, but a bunch of those guys sure did.
> 
> And since mental health is apparently becoming a thing in this meandering WIP, I just want to mention Crisis Chat: http://www.crisischat.org/ It's totally free and it's available around the clock and you can talk to someone about anything you want.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What Felicity learned while hacking the phones of a few thousand Verdant guests was that monogamy was truly dead and that men were garbage. Just a massive assemblage of two-timing dumpster fires. And none of them could stop sending dick pics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance for all the canon dialog. Oliver got all the action scenes in this episode and ou never realize how much talking goes on until you have to re-write it...

_ Stripped to its essence, combat is a series of quick decisions and rather precise actions carried out in concert with ten or twelve other men. In that sense it’s much more like football than, say, like a gang fight. The unit that choreographs their actions best usually wins. They might take casualties, but they win. That choreography—you lay down fire while I run forward, then I cover you while you move your team up—is so powerful that it can overcome enormous tactical deficits. There is choreography for storming Omaha Beach, for taking out a pillbox bunker, and for surviving an L-shaped ambush at night on the Gatigal. The choreography always requires that each man make decisions based not on what’s best for him, but on what’s best for the group. If everyone does that, most of the group survives. If no one does, most of the group dies. That, in essence, is combat. _

-Sebastian Junger,  _ War _

 

**Starling, 2014**

What Felicity learned while hacking the phones of a few thousand Verdant guests was that monogamy was truly dead and that men were garbage. Just a massive assemblage of two-timing dumpster fires. And none of them could stop sending dick pics. Why? What inborn compulsion possessed men to not only document but share their genitalia with the world at large? She tried not to look, but the whole experience was nauseating on several levels. In her mind, she heard Peter Thomas’ narration:  _ But what the kidnapper never expected was what this intrepid young doctor found...amongst the dick pics _ . When she ran the partial plate she found, she almost dropped her phone. Instead of the Hood phone, she texted Oliver directly.

“Judy,” she typed and sent. Only then did she realize she was still in last night’s unseasonably themed Hanukkah pajamas, hair unwashed and unbrushed. The desk around her was littered with coffee cups and a few dirty classes crusted with what looked like smoothie remains. She vaguely recalled Diggle trying to give her things. “John?”

“She speaks!” he exclaimed. She whirled in her chair to see him in his suit, somehow still unwrinkled.

“Did you feed me?”

“I brought you a cheeseburger at around midnight and you told me to go to hell. But I found if I put a straw in a smoothie, and placed it close enough to your face, you would drink it. You were really in the zone.”

“Yeah. It’s like the MCAT all over again. I once passed out a study session. My friends fed me gummy bears and Mountain Dew until I was ready to keep going. Oh no. The hospital!”

“I took care of it.”

“How?”

“I told them that I was your apartment manager and that your floor had flooded. I said you couldn’t come to the phone because you were helping a little old lady across the hall try to salvage her wedding album from the fifties.”

“You are a prince among men.”

“What do we have?” Oliver said, practically flying down the stairs.

“Right,” she said. “I pinged and hacked the phone of everyone who used a credit card at Verdant last night. I screened every photo I could access, which I do not recommend to anyone. One gentleman, in the processing of trying to turn on his flash so that he could get a good picture with his phone down the front of his pants, caught a partial plate. It’s registered to Slade Wilson and the GPS is on.”

“Where is it right now?”

“Parked outside a defunct bar on Roosevelt.”

It came as something of a surprise to Felicity to see Roy and Sara also in the lair. She hadn’t heard them come in at any point in the night. But of course they had. Sara had apparently found a pit viper to milk for its venom, which was appropriately badass. Roy had made time to get more pissed off. Of course, it didn’t help anyone’s attitude when they lost Slade entirely a few hours later.

 

* * *

 

Felicity sat in her computer chair, head pillowed on folded arms atop the desk. She was in that state that doctors reach when they can’t stay awake anymore, but they can’t really afford to fall asleep either. On-call-room sleep. The sleep of the desperately tired who know they will absolutely be woken soon. At any moment, someone was going to code. She could feel it.

“What now?” Roy asked and she heard with the semi-wakeful part of her brain.

“We wait for Oliver. Figure out what our next move will be.” Diggle sounded resigned.

“Wait for him to tell us, you mean. We can’t do anything without King Queen’s permission!”

“You’re out of line, Roy.”

“Let’s all just calm down,” Sara said, very reasonably. “Slade outplayed us. It happens.”

“No,” Roy’s voice was biting. “It only happened because the police let Slade go--after we turned him in, because Oliver told us to!”

“What were we supposed to do?”

“You’re Special Forces. She’s an international assassin. You would think between the three of us, we could have gotten answers out of Slade ourselves instead of turning him into the police. Here’s what’s really sick: we didn’t even question him because he said it was the right thing to do. Just like he said I needed to break up with Thea, one week after telling me that it wasn’t safe to leave her alone.”

And….code blue.

“Wait!” Felicity lifted her head off her arms, blinking to clear the sleep gunk from them. “First of all, Slade Wilson is crazier than a sack of ferrets. He makes Ivan Milat look like a well-balanced individual. I don’t think you or anybody else could make him talk, no matter how enhanced your interrogation was. Second of all, Oliver did not kidnap Thea. One person kidnapped Thea, the aforementioned batshit Australian.”

“It’s his fault that I wasn’t there to stop it!”

“And I think you’re just blaming Oliver because you lost Slade after the precinct.” Sara’s voice was still even, but much less charitable than it had been.

“Of course you think that. You’re screwing him.”

“I beg your pardon!” Felicity more or less screeched. It had been a favorite phrase of one of her better caseworkers in Vegas, mostly because of its broad range of applications. Felicity had really tested that poor woman’s vocabulary. “Roy. Get it together.”

He sneered at her. It was a look of such pure contempt that she’d rather he had just slapped her, Mirakuru and all. She had to look away as he headed for the stairs.

“Hey, where are you going?” Sara asked, stepping in front of him.

“Well, sitting around here isn’t helping Thea, now is it?”

“Neither is you running off half-cocked, Roy,” Digg said and Felicity noticed something about the way he was holding himself that made her nervous.

“I know that you think this is the Mirakuru, but it’s not. I’m right and you know that I am. So you better get the hell out of my way.”

“Roy,” she said firmly, trying to remember the de-escalation training she’d had, formal and otherwise. “I’m worried that you might do something to put us or Thea in more danger. I think she would want us to wait here.”

“She’s right, Roy,” Diggle said. “Come on, let’s throttle back.”

For a second, Felicity thought it might work. Then Roy had Diggle face first into one of their stainless steel work tables. She took a step forward, but the arrow flying through the air made everyone freeze in place.

“Next one goes into your chest,” Sara said with complete certainty. “Let him go.”

“You’d honestly kill me because I dare criticize the almighty Oliver Queen?”

“No, I’d kill you because you’re hurting my friend. Let him go.”

“Let him go!” Oliver roared from the stairs. “What the hell is going on down here?”

“We got a lot of hot tempers,” Felicity said quietly.

“I’m done,” Roy hissed, like she hadn’t spoken at all. “That’s what’s going on. Thea, she’s out there, hurt or worse, because of one person. And that is not Slade Wilson.”

“Enough!” Felicity snapped. “Roy, if you’re going, then go. Go!”

He gave her one more venomous look, and then he went. Felicity felt entirely empty, enervated. One of her work stations beeped at her and she turned, listlessly, to look.

“Oh my G-d. Oliver!”

“What now?” Diggle asked as Oliver ran back up the stairs he had just entered from.

“Isabel Rochev has officially stolen Queen Consolidated.” She dropped back into her chair. “The timing…”

“No,” Sara said grimly. “It’s not a coincidence.”

 

* * *

 

“At least let us man the perimeter.” For John Diggle, this was begging.

“No, Isabel was very clear. I come alone or Thea dies.”

“Ollie, this is another one of Slade’s games, and unless--”

“No, what I can’t do, Sara, is nothing!” he yelled and suddenly Felicity could tell how very close Oliver was to his own personal breaking point. However tired she was, however fried, he had been pushed past it.  He was hurting and she was the one who flinched. “What would you do if it were Laurel or your father or your mother? I will not get dragged into the same debate over and over again!”

“Go,” Felicity said quietly, stepping in front of Digg and Sarah. “Go get Thea. Do what you have to do. Bring her home.”

Behind her, the others were silent as they watched the Hood stalk away. It occurred to Felicity that she had made the call for all of them.

 

* * *

 

In her ear, Oliver sounded short of breath in an unusual way. Another broken rib? Heaven forbid, a lung? Was he bleeding out?  _ Think hoofbeats, not zebras _ . He was just fighting his ass off and exhausted and under duress. He was not bleeding out. He had not nicked a lung. Probably. Felicity got the text from Lance, sat down very heavily, and waited for the combat noises on the other end to stop before she pinged him.

“Go!” he said, panting.

“Are you okay?” she asked, unable to stop herself.

“Yeah, I’m fine, but Thea’s not here!”

“I know. She walked into Lance’s precinct five minutes ago. He says she looks totally unharmed.” 

Lance also said she looked like a goddam mess, but Felicity was choosing to withhold that information. Oliver would find out soon enough. Thea was back. That was the salient point.

 

* * *

 

“What are you two doing here? Still...doing here?”

Felicity and Diggle exchanged a look. She was a little more rumpled, with some new coffee stains on her dreidel pajama pants. He was still disturbingly put together. But neither of them was going any damn place.

“We thought we’d wait you out,” John said. “We know you’re sleeping here at night.”

“What are you doing here?” Oliver asked again, unable to meet their eyes.

“Where else would we be?”

Once again, Felicity was jealous of John’s ability to be both matter-of-fact and 100% sentimental at the same time. She would have bet real money that he could simultaneous apply a pressure bandage and give a pep talk in less than seven words. Oliver turned his back to them, sitting on a work table.

“Roy was right,” he said, and his voice quavered. “At every turn I made the wrong decision. With him. With the company. And...and with Thea.”

“Oliver. Roy is a very, very angry kid.” She spoke with gentle authority. “You made every decision with the best information you had at the time. That’s all the power that anyone gets.” It was a speech she had given to a lot of bereaved family members and it was true.

“I am my own worst enemy.”

“That’s Slade talking. Don’t let him in your head.”

“I can’t keep him out of my head, Diggle! I can’t...I can’t stop him from doing anything.”

“Yes you can,” she said firmly, stepping forward.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because you’re not alone, man.” John put his hands in his pockets. “Now what, boss?” 

Damn. Eight words. Oliver hung his head and she waited, shaking with fatigue and caffeine, praying that Digg really had the magic touch.

“Now we fight back.”

Game on. Just as soon as she got a shower.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know,” Felicity said, “as plans go, this one is a little bananas.”
> 
> “Felicity.” Oliver’s voice was high-noon dry. “This was your plan.”
> 
> “Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d actually let me play with C4.”
> 
> “Who’s playing? Sara asked saucily.

_ Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood. _

-Zora Neal Hurston

 

**Starling, 2014**

“No balaclava for you?” Sara asked.

“Too hot.” Felicity pulled the black hoorag up and over her nose. She had forgotten it was printed with a skull and spine until she realized everyone else in the van was looking at her funny. Felicity blushed, but it was mercifully hidden.

“Nice.” Sara offered her a fist and they pounded. Digg’s mouth twitched in the rear view mirror and Oliver furrowed his brow.

“You know,” Felicity said, “as plans go, this one is a little bananas.”

“Felicity.” Oliver’s voice was high-noon dry. “This was your plan.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d actually let me play with C4.”

“Who’s playing? Sara asked saucily.

“We’re here,” Digg said.

Quick and clean were Oliver’s exact words. And they had all been here before, save Sara, who looked as excited to blow things up as Felicity felt.

“I’m a bomber,” she said to herself, grinning underneath the mask. Fetter would be proud. Or horrified. Hard to say. “I can’t believe I’m a bomber. It’s always good to have a backup career. I could pitch myself as a demolitions expert.”

When they were back in the van, fleeing.away from the scene of the crime, Diggle kept his eyes on the road. Oliver was looking back with regret. Sara was looking at Oliver. Felicity was watching a small world burn.

 

* * *

 

“...you will be caught and punished.”

“For the record,” Felicity said, “I always thought she was a bitch, and not the Cat Grant kind, either.”

“Okay,” Oliver said. “Slade’s goal is to create an army of human weapons using the Mirakuru. To do that, he needs an industrial centrifuge.”

“Which Isabel Rochev gave him complete access to.”

“But since we blew up Applied Sciences, he can’t use your tech to play Dr. Moreau.”

“Slade has had us on our heels for weeks. It’s about time we took the fight to him.”

“All this will do is set him back. We have no way of knowing where the next attack is coming from.”

 

* * *

 

Felicity might have felt bad about hiding under the stairs while everyone else got their ass kicked if she wasn’t also morally certain of her inability to physically confront Slade Wilson. There had been an eyeblink--Slade Wilson, gun--and then Oliver was squeezing the everloving hell out of her ribs while he flipped them over the railing like a kid on the monkey bars. Felicity’s fight-flight-freeze instinct was set firmly to freeze and she made herself as small a target as possible and hoped that Slade would forget her, especially after her friends stopped fighting back.

_ I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m not here. _

She repeated it, with her whole entire brain, until she heard Diggle groan, stumble, and throw the lights back on. Felicity had made herself a very small target indeed, curled into a ball, with hands firmly over her ears. She was panting like she’d been the one doing the fighting. Cautiously, she uncurled herself and crawled on hands and knees out from under the stairs to confirm her suspicions: they’d got the shit kicked out of them.

“Okay,” she said shakily, using all her concentration to rise to standing, leaning against the stairs. “Raise your hand if you lost consciousness?”

The morons all looked at each other.

“Fine. Everybody gets a CAT scan.”

“Felicity--”   


“Oliver!” She was using her loud voice, up to eleven. “This is not a negotiation! Everybody’s getting a goddam CAT scan!”

“You’re right,” Diggle said. 

“I know I’m right!” Felicity pushed her hair back from her face. “And you have to do it at Glades Memorial.”

“Why?” Sara asked, hauling herself upright.

“Because I don’t have admitting privileges at Starling General and I reserve the right to 71-05 every last one of you.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Oliver admitted.

“And you don’t want to find out. Listen, I’ll meet you there.”

“What’s our cover?” Thank G-d for Diggle.

“Motorcycle accident?”

“Mm.” Felicity looked them over. “It’s a stretch, but we can sell it. No road rash, though.”

“I can make road rash happen,” Sara offered, perfectly serious.

“Nobody’s making road rash happen! You people are going to give me an ulcer. No. No road rash. It’ll have to be a collision, at low speed. Tell them you hit your heads and they’ll have to do the scan.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Oliver asked.

“I’ll be right behind you. Just...try and pretend like you don’t know me.”

“Why is that?”

“Because when you’re a doctor in a hospital people actually listen to you and do what you say and I don’t want you people killing my vibe.”

 

* * *

 

“Cisco and Caitiln, Barry’s friends, couldn’t tell me what was missing, so I hacked into Harrison Wells’ personal files. I’m basically flexing the Matrix now. I hope you all appreciate that.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s a bio transfuser. It’s designed to deliver fluids by IV from a single source to multiple recipients. Despite the exponentially greater risks associated with hooking up a bunch of people with needles to one another. Do they want hepatitis? Cause that’s how everyone gets hepatitis. Apparently the inventor was a little...not all there. One bad apple would definitely spoil the whole bunch.”

“Why would Slade need a blood transfusion?”

“He doesn’t. The prisoners that he freed from Iron Heights last week to create his own personal army do.”

“I wonder…” Felicity trailed off.

“What?”

“What?”

“You were wondering.”

“Oh. Right. Well, imagine that the transfuser is like an Octobong.”

Oliver grinned and Sara snorted.

“A what?” Diggle asked.

“It’s like a beer bong,” Oliver explained, “except that instead of one funnel and one tube, there are eight tubes attached to a ten to twenty gallon drum, split lengthwise.”

“While I was in the army, you went to college for this?”

“Four times.”

“Okay, so,” Felicity said, gesturing. “You have your drum that the tubes are attached to. That’s our mystery machine. And then you have the convicts, who are going to be drinking from the Octobong. But imagine that the Mirakuru solution, the beer, could be held in the drum a little longer, allowing the more lethal by-products to metabolize before they’re delivered to your exceedingly violent frat boys. Your success rate increases--drastically.”

“That’s going to require a whole lot of blood. Even a man with Slade’s stamina can’t handle that kind of drain.”

“Good. He’ll be weak, vulnerable, and that will be my opportunity to kill him.”

“How do we find this thing?”

“Unlike the humble Octobong, which requires only the force of gravity, this transfuser is not energy star rated. When he plugs it in, I’ll know. There’s something else, though.”

“What?”

“I took a look at Slade’s service jacket. His blood type is A positive. He couldn’t donate to all those cons, not without serious complications and, you know, death.”

“Can’t the biotransfuser work around it?”

“No one else in hematology has been able to in the history of medicine. And if the Mirakuru bolsters a person’s immune system, it could potentially make a transfusion reaction that much more dangerous. It just doesn’t make sense. We’re missing something.”

 

* * *

 

“Slade, he’s just a kid!”

Oh. Trying to guess what was happening on the other end of Oliver’s comm had to be her least favorite game. But this was pretty clear. Now they knew where Roy was.

“Come on, Roy,” Oliver said. “Alright, stay with me.”

Oliver returned with Roy, but he couldn’t reconcile what she saw with what she knew. She understood that Roy wasn’t dead, except that he looked really dead laid out on their gurney. Fresh, but dead.

“Tell me what you need,” Sara was saying.

This was exactly why you weren’t supposed to practice on your own family. Your brain and your eyes and your gut all lied to you.  _ Put your doctor hat on, Smoak _ . Heartbeat: too fast. Breath: too fast, to shallow. Complexion: pallid, mottled, clammy. Cells: dying. Kidneys: probably failing. 

“Felicity,” Oliver said quietly and squeezed her shoulder. “Roy needs you.”

She took a very deep shuddering breath. 

“What do you need me to do,” Sara repeated.

“Um. Oxygen. That first. Then put a pulse-ox on him. Also, blood. I have blood for everyone. Roy’s O-neg. Make sure we’re using O neg. Diggle, I need you to hang that for me. Dopamine. Someone hand me the dopamine. And I need a blood pressure reading, right now right now. And then the heart monitor. Sara, if I draw the blood, can you give me a rough ABG?”

“Of course.”

“What can I do?” Oliver asked, looking haunted as she casually inserted a hypodermic syringe into Roy’s mottled wrist.

“Cut his pants off. Check for other injuries, anything obvious. Elevate his feet--we should have a a few pillows under his calves. Then get him under the warming blanket.”

Just like that, everyone was in motion, except for her. This was how they ran trauma in the UK. One person, perfectly still, making all the decisions because that stillness allowed them to see clearly. Felicity tried to see clearly. She used her middle and ring fingers to monitor his carotid pulse, even though the pulse-oximeter was doing that job for her. Ditto the heart monitor when John had it set up. Eventually, everything was done. His blood pressure and oxygen were coming back up and his heart rate was entering a safer range. His capillary refill was improving. He showed no signs of consciousness. It wasn’t great. It was barely satisfactory. They moved him from the gurney to a hospital bed that Roy himself had liberated at some point. And given to her as a Roy-type gift.

“How is he?” Diggle asked.

“Well,” Felicity said, looking up at her friends, her clinical brain still fully engaged. “I figured out why Slade picked him. He’s O-neg, the universal donor. No transfusion reactions. I should have figured that out earlier. That was stupid. Anyway. My main concern now is the progression of the hypovolemic shock. I think if he’d be dead already if weren’t for the Mirakuru. I don’t know enough about it to know if it can reverse this kind of cell and brain damage. He could decompensate and die tonight. It’s possible he could live, but be a vegetable. Like Barry.”

Oliver winced visibly.

“Sorry. But if you all could step away, I have to insert a Foley catheter. If his kidneys fail, everything fails. I have to watch his kidneys now.”

She did that while the team turned their backs, to give Roy a little privacy. They discussed the Mirakuru Oliver had taken and its potential antidote. Felicity peeled off her gloves, disposed of them, and then brushed her hand over Roy’s forehead, feeling the prickly rebound of his short hair.

“Felicity?” Oliver again, sounding sadder. “I’m so sorry.”

“Where was he?”

“Slade said a shelter in Bludhaven, but I don’t know if it’s true.”

“He hated shelters. That’s how I met him. Did I ever tell you how I met him?”

“No.” Oliver walked around the gurney to stand on Roy’s other side while she continued to smooth his forehead gently.

“Shelters are the only thing he hates more than doctors. He never would have come into the clinic except that Sin made him. She didn’t work there yet, just a friend of Roy’s. He was so thin--I don’t know if he was newly homeless or if he’d been using or what. But he’d been in that shelter over on 5th. It was run the Baptists before you got back and it was basically a poorhouse. The Lutherans took it over last year and they run a much tighter ship. But this was before that, and Roy had picked up scabies and whooping cough. Have you ever seen someone with whooping cough?”

Oliver shook his head.

“It’s hard to watch. Anyway, he was miserable. I started him on permethrin and ivermectin. But the problem with permethrin is you have to apply it, waiting twelve hours, and then wash it off. And he didn’t have a place to sleep, much less a shower. So I broke some rules. A lot of rules. Sin and I hid him in my apartment above the clinic. I washed everything he owned like three times. He had to stay for five days after he started antibiotics for the pertussis. He must have eaten eight sandwiches a day, at least. He was so hungry.”

Discomfited, Oliver shifted his weight.

“After that, he swore he wouldn’t go back to a shelter ever again. So I bought my friend Anna--you remember the librarian you bought all those books for?--I bought her totally decrepit Suburban and parked it behind the clinic. I photoshopped this official-looking sign that I put on the dash, about how the Suburban was an official clinic vehicle and had to be parked there in case of emergency. Roy must have lived there for a month or more. Sin was always hanging around, so eventually I talked the QC board into giving me a little extra money for a receptionist-bouncer position.”

“You collected a lot of strays.”

“Yeah,” Felicity raised her eyes to his, “including this one guy who showed up with smoke inhalation and vertigo toxicity. And his motley crew”

“And here I thought we collected you.” There was a hint of a smile.

“Dream on, Queen.” She sighed. “Go, find your sister. We’ll be fine.”

Felicity waited until he and Diggle were gone from the lair and then she lowered the railing and climbed into bed next to Roy. She crossed her ankles and exhaled heavily.

“You okay over there?” Sara asked. She walked over and into Felicity’s field of vision.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look okay.”

“I want Roy to be okay.”

“Me, too.” Sara smiled in a way that didn’t reach much of her face. “Go ahead and close your eyes. I’ll wake you up in a couple hours. Shift starts at eight, right?”

“Yep. Thanks.”

“Get some sleep, Felicity. I got you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who have never attended a frat party at an Ivy League university and seen an Octobong lowered from the ceiling with great ceremony, you probably learned more freshman year than I did.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder: I have no idea what I'm doing.

_ In many ways, women are death’s natural companions. Every time a woman gives birth, she is creating not only a life, but a death. Samuel Beckett wrote that women “give birth astride of a grave.” Mother Nature is indeed a real mother, creating and destroying in a constant loop. _

-Caitlin Doughty

 

**Starling, 2014**

“No change?” John asked.

“No. I mean, he’s better. His bloodwork is fine. His kidneys are fine. The Mirakuru, however much Slade gave him, has at least repaired the damage to his body from the blood loss. He’s passing his Glasgow with flying colors, except, you know, the minor waking up part.”

“What about the cure?”

“I talked to Caitlin this morning. I think I understood maybe one word in three. She’s a much more serious chemist than I am. They’re working on it. Any news on Isabel?”

“None. It was like she was never CEO at all.”

“We should be so lucky. I kind of hope she remains unmourned and unremembered. Which might make me a bad person.”

“Felicity, I don’t think there’s a force on earth that can make you a bad person.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Hey, listen, I’m starving. Dinner?”

“Yes, please. No BBB, though. I don’t think my arteries can take it.”

“Sushi, then.” 

“Sushi. Oh, hey, Digg! You forgot your phone,” Felicity said, and jogged after him to hand it back. “Remember, no--”

“No crab, no shrimp, no tempura.”

“My hero.”

Diggle winked and jogged up the stairs, like Big Belly Burger hadn’t even made a dent in his cardio fitness. Felicity walked back to Roy’s bed and looked at him, not clinically, but the way she hoped someone might look at her in a hospital bed. Like she was still a person and not a collection of symptoms and malfunctions to be adjusted and reversed.

“Do you mind if I take a nap with you?” Felicity asked him. “I know it’s weird. But I have nightmares where you stop breathing when I’m not here. Plus, that was a ten hour shift I just finished.  And I’d sleep on the cot, but Oliver’s been here so often that it’s kind of starting to smell like him. And he does smell like Old Spice, by the way. I was right about that. You and I can share a bed and it’s not weird. But I smell Old Spice and bow rosin and let me tell you it gets real weird real fast. And if you remember this when you wake up, I am screwed. So please pretend like I never told you about the rosin thing.”

She released the side rail of the bed and lowered it, looking down and away to make sure she could secure it without making too much noise, like it might accidentally wake the coma patient. Old habits. When she looked up, the bed was empty.

“Oh shit!” She jumped about a foot in the air, hand firmly planted over her heart, the very picture of her mother. Felicity whirled around. “Warn a girl, would you? My nerves aren’t what they used to be.”

Roy was holding very still. Then he took his laundered clothes from the plastic bag at the foot of the bed and began to get dressed.

“Jesus Christ! Did you take your own catheter out? You were not supposed to do that.” Felicity took a step forward and stopped, the little hairs on the back of her neck rising. “Roy?”

He was perfectly coordinated, but he was trembling. No, he was vibrating. And now he was looking directly through her.

“Roy, are you alright? Can you hear me?”

He took one step forward. Roy wasn’t home.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to leave.” She held her hands low and ready, feet in hachiji dachi. “I think you should stay down here. I would feel better if I could ask you a few questions.”

Roy took another step forward. Felicity made very careful fists with her hands.

“Please, Roy. It’s me.”

He rushed her. Her left foot dropped back and her right hand reached to grab for him. Her hand met fabric and she pulled his shoulder in close and then shoved it towards the floor. Roy looked like he was falling, for about a half a second, and then he slipped one foot behind her ankle and slammed the palm of his hand into her chest. She went ass over teakettle onto the foundry floor, throwing her palms out to break her fall before her head could hit and mostly succeeding. By the time she found her feet, Roy was long gone.

“Frak!” she yelled to no one in particular. Hissing, she cradled her arm against her chest and flexed her fingers. Just bruised, probably. She was going to need a better excuse. Kanerva was starting to suspect she had a secret asswipe boyfriend who knocked her around.

Focus. Attendings later. Backup now. Call the cavalry. Nursing her wrist, and her ego, she found her way to the phone and called the one person she knew would pick up no matter what.

“Forget the sushi, Digg.”

“I knew it. Cheeseburger or chili fries or both?”

“Yeah, no, Roy’s awake. And also he’s gone.”

 

* * *

 

Peeved, Felicity iced her wrist and waited for her favorite vigilantes to pick up their damn phones. 

“I’m ringing them both with the Hood ring, why aren’t they answering?”

Diggle gave her a look.

“You’re right. Don’t answer that.”

“Felicity?” Oliver finally answered, voice a little gravelly.

“No, it’s Avon calling. Roy’s in the wind. You both need to get back here.”

The Ducati made the trip in record time. 

“What happened?”

“He was out like a light,” Felicity said. “I would have sworn to it. And then he was very, very awake. And he was..not in control. I didn’t see Slade, at your house, you know. But Roy wasn’t...there. I’ve never seen a body so clearly...occupied, but the mind totally blank.”

“Where do you think he’s going?” Sara asked.

“I have no idea.” It wasn’t easy to admit.

 

* * *

 

Finding out that Roy had hit Sin was bad. Roy showing up at Sin’s crashpad was bad. Hearing Oliver scream-- _ scream _ \--over comms was worst. Felicity bolted for the door and Digg was right behind her, carrying the doctor’s bag she had forgotten. It wasn’t far to the clocktower and she didn’t even feel the stairs under her feet. She definitely didn’t notice the fact that they were half a block away, that there were cops close by, and real ambulances, and a certain amount of chaos.

Sara was kneeling next to Oliver, helping prop him up, as he sat with his right knee bent oddly and a gray and distant expression on his face.

“I don’t know what it is,” she said. “I’m afraid to move it.”

“Absolutely do not move it,” Felicity said, dropping to the floor on his other side. “Without trying, Oliver, I mean do not try, can you tell if you can straighten the leg?”

“No,” he said, and she could see sweat dripping off him. She looked more closely--his pants were fitted, but there was enough room in the knee to allow him freedom of movement. She could see enough to take a damn good guess.

“How did it happen?”

“He kicked me--hard.”

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take this handy cardboard splint and stabilize you enough to move. Then we’re going to Glades Memorial.”

“Felicity--”

“I’m Dr. Smoak right now,” she said, steamrolling right over him. “Your kneecap is dislocated. If you look closely, and I don’t recommend it, you’ll see that it’s no longer where it should be.”

“Oh Holy Mother.” That was Diggle.

“Yeah, so. We’re going to Glades Memorial. It’s the middle of the night. It’s not a full moon. And I know the trauma surgeon working. I may even know the radiologist. We can trust them. I’m going to put a quick cardboard brace on this, and then Diggle and Sara are going to get you downstairs and into the van and into the staff entrance of the hospital.”

“I can’t--”

“Oliver, I can’t fix this without an MRI and another pair of hands!” Felicity reached out, touched his chin, and lifted his face to look directly at him. “This isn’t a rib, it’s the most complicated joint in your body. It’s full of tendons and blood and if we don’t get this right, you could lose blood flow and suffer irreversible muscle death and-or damage nerves that might never grow. This might already be a career-ending injury. Do you understand me?” 

Nothing but gritted teeth and shallow breaths.

“I said:  _ do you understand me _ ?”

He nodded.

“Fucking finally. You people. My ulcer.” Felicity took a deep breath and busted out her cardboard splint. She slipped it under his knee and pulled off her sweatshirt (fine it was technically a Team Arrow sweatshirt) and folded into a rough pyramid. This she tucked between the splint and the bottom of his bent knee. As delicately as she could, she wrapped the splint with gauze, trying to make sure the splint was stable but not putting pressure on the joint.

“Time to stand you up,” Diggle said.

“Be his crutch down the stairs, or carry him, whichever works best,” Felicity instructed--she and Sara were too short to be helpful here. “I don’t care if you have to pick him up  _ Dirty Dancing _ style, I don’t want any weight on the bad leg.”

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” Sara smiled encouragingly at Oliver, helping to break the tension. “I’ll see if I can find Roy’s trail.”

“I’ve got this,” Diggle agreed. Getting Oliver down the flights of stairs and into the van couldn’t have been easy. But like everything else, Digg made it appear so. As soon as Oliver was on his back and secured to the van’s floor, the door shut behind them and they pulled away. Felicity took her shirt off.

“What are you--”

“Close your eyes if you don’t want to see the show,” she snapped and stripped off her street clothes. That was another point for scrubs: easy to put on in the back of moving motor vehicles. Very deliberately, she did not look to see if he was watching. Felicity took her spare ID badge--she had counterfeit ones for all area hospitals in her bag--and clipped it onto her scrubs, casually slinging a stethoscope over her neck.

“We’re here,” John said.

“I’m going in for a wheelchair. Don’t take him out until I’m back.” She returned with the chair and some miscellaneous hospital linen. As Digg got him into the chair, Felicity threw a blanket over his shoulders and pulled it up over his head and hood. She covered his lap and legs with some sheets and hoped no one looked too closely.

“I’m hot.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’ll be close,” John promised.

Once they were inside the hospital, it was almost too easy. She wheeled Oliver into an elevator and they rode the elevator down to the basement radiology department as two night nurses chatted beside them  about union politics and which interns might be using the handicapped bathroom on the fourth floor for sexual relations. They didn’t look at Felicity or Oliver twice.

Nonchalantly, she pushed Oliver down the hall and into an exam room that no one liked to use and no one would admit might be haunted. Ghosts were the least of her problems tonight. Once the door was shut behind them, Felicity pulled the blankets off him and he sighed in some relief.

“I’m going to page my guy.”

“You’re sure we can trust him?”

“I’m sure we don’t have a choice.”

Two minutes later, Dr. Kanerva met her outside the exam room.

“Dr. Smoak? Are you working tonight?”

“Um, no.”

“I see.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Then would you care to explain why I got a 911 page to the poltergeist room?”

“Well. I’m in a bit of a pickle, sir. More of SNAFU. Maybe even a clusterfuck.”

“What kind of clusterfuck?” Dr. Kanerva did not seem particularly disturbed. She loved that about him.

“I think you’d better have a look.” Felicity opened the door, revealing the Hood, splinted, in a wheelchair.

Dr. Kanerva let out a long, low whistle.

“Pretty sure the patella is dislocated.”

“I’ll say. Well. Dr. Smoak, will you assist me in removing the patient’s pants?”

“You bet.”

Oliver tapped his voice modulator. “Don’t cut them.”

“We can you new pants,” she said. “A new knee’s going to be a lot harder to come by.”

It took longer than Oliver would have liked. They cut his pants off, which she could tell he resented, and checked his blood supply and his feeling below the knee. The hardest part was when they took him to the MRI and he had to take his jacket and hood off because some of the fastenings were metal. Felicity waited until she could see Kanerva in the booth, with his back turned, before helping him get them off. She laid a quick hand on his forehead, palm first.

“What was that for?” he asked, bemused.

“I don’t want you getting shocky on me. I have no clue what kind of cover story I could use this time.”

“I won’t get shocky on you,” he said, with a thin smile. ”I promise.”

“Okay. I’m going to just drape this over you and then Janine and--”

“Who’s Janine?”

“Dr. Freeman, the radiologist, but don’t worry. You saved her husband from a carjacking last year. I'll put the sheet over your face and she’ll forget you were ever here.”

Janine, who had nearly become a widow 18 months before, was told that there was an unidentified patient with knee trauma that needed an MRI. She saw Felicity pick up a green, leather hood from the hook and only blinked before announcing that she was going to do then scan and then go get some coffee from the cafeteria and not come back for a while. Janine was good as gold, as a radiologist and as human being. Felicity resolved to bake her something, or at least purchase some baked goods.

Back in the exam room, she and Dr. Kanerva looked at the film.

“How bad?” the Hood asked.

“It could have been much worse,” Felicity said.

“There’s no significant nerve or vascular damage,” Dr. Kanerva confirmed. “Your tendons are another story. We’ll reduce the knee now and brace the leg. The necessarily physical therapy…”

“I’ll see what I can do about that,” Felicity said vaguely.

“I’m sure. Conscious sedation?”

“No,” she said. “Better a local.”

“You’re sure?”

Felicity turned towards Oliver. “Do you want no pain and some fogginess after, or semi-excrutiating pain that will probably make you puke?”

“No fogginess,” Oliver said.

Felicity looked at Kanerva and shrugged. She administered the local, which would help a little, but not nearly as much as a heaping helping of propofol. Hell, she might need some herself before the night was over.

“Would you like to do the honors?” he asked, indicated the misplaced kneecap.

“No. No. Absolutely not.” She could feel herself blanching.

“This is a teaching hospital.”

“I can’t. I can’t--” Felicity looked at the other doctor. What was she supposed to say?  _ I would, but I have feelings for the human attached to the kneecap? I’d love to, but hurting him makes me want to die? If he screams again, I might be the one fainting? _

“As you like,” Kanerva said. “You know, this answers a few questions I had about you.”

“I’ll bet.”

“It poses a few more.”

“Maybe next time?”

“Indeed. Would you please immobilize the patient’s torso?”

This was the problem with working without sedation. The patient tended to object to the screaming agony of a joint reduction. So while Dr. Kanerva placed one strong hand on Oliver’s ankle, and another on his knee, Felicity climbed into the bed with Oliver, who smelled like fear sweat and, yes, still a little Old Spice. She knelt behind him, bracing him in a half-sitting position by leaning the front of her shoulders against the back of his. She also reached around and held her hands firmly on his hips, feeling the waistband of his boxer briefs and his beautiful, beautiful iliac furrow.

“I’m going to straighten your knee now,” Dr. Kanerva warned him. “There may be some discomfort.”

“Just do it,” Oliver said.

“Try and relax your leg,” she whispered. “Hold onto the bed railings if you need to. But try and relax the leg.”

Oliver didn’t scream again, but he did cry out one time as Kanerva made the final push into place. Then he fell back against Felicity, a little short of breath, but much more relaxed. She murmured quietly, encouraging him like any other patient, right up until she realized she had just said “Good job, baby.” That took her back to reality pretty damn quickly. At least Oliver still looked gray and checked out. Felicity climbed out of bed, watching Kanerva finish fastening the brace, and helped him check Oliver’s left and right ABI ratios again.

“I’d like to keep you overnight,” Dr. Kanerva said, without conviction.

“Sorry,” Felicity said, with even less. Together, they helped Oliver back into the wheelchair.

“Do you have a car waiting?”

“Close by.”

“Would you allow me to help you out?”

“Better not.” She didn’t need to look at Oliver.

“You’re familiar with the aftercare, Dr. Smoak?”

“I...yes.”

“You know,” Dr. Kanerva said to the man the in wheelchair, “six months ago, I wouldn’t have had much more than an Ace bandage to offer you. Until someone put the Triad out of business. Ever since, I’ve been looking for a way to thank you.”

“You can thank me by forgetting,” Oliver said.

“I am notoriously bad at charting. Dr. Smoak, I’ll see you later, I’m sure.”

“Yes, sir.”

She exhaled heavily as soon as he was gone. Her remaining residency was going to be interesting. She pushed the wheelchair back towards the staff entrance. Oliver now had XXL blue scrubs over his brace, and the blanket back over his shoulders. The destroyed pants were in Felicity’s bag. Always take the evidence with you, Fetter would say. Digg would be there shortly.

“Do you know what happened tonight?” he asked, apropos of nothing.

“I don’t think tonight is even over.”

“Roy killed a cop.”

“What?” The chair stopped. “No. No, that can’t be true.”

“Felicity, I saw him. From the tower. He put my arrow all the way through him.”

“No.” But now she remembered the lights and sirens, the speed with which Digg drove away and the way Sara had melted into the darkness. “What are we going to do?”

The van pulled up and Sara leaned out. “Let’s roll.”

This time, Felicity and Oliver sat across from one another in the back. He held both hands against the floor and she held his foot to keep his leg from being jostled. She didn’t ask again and Oliver didn’t answer. Getting him down the foundry stairs without Digg was somewhat comical. Felicity would stay under one shoulder, and Sara would step down to the next stair, where Oliver would use her as a cane. This process repeated itself until they got to the bottom. Oliver then refused to sit on the gurney, so Felicity found a steel stool and somewhat mashed pillow to elevate his leg on, and went to the freezer for some cold packs to start icing it.

“Those aren’t going to fix your knee,” Sara said, while Felicity double-checked the pulse in Oliver’s feet. He was grinding up some of his magic weeds, which she mostly pretended didn’t exist. Sara was right. Magic weeds were not going to do shit.

“They’ll help it heal faster,” he snapped. Ah yes, the good old placebo effect.

“And until then?”

“Where are we with facial recognition?” Clearly, Oliver had had quite enough of being a patient for the night.

“Um.” Felicity brushed her hands off. “The cameras are hacked and running, but there’s no money shot. Hoods are surprisingly effective.”

“Felicity. We need to find him before the police.”

“Because they’ll kill him and we won’t?”

Felicity flinched and tried to look at her screen and not listen while they talked about whether or not to kill Roy. She paid more attention when Sara announced that she would do what had to be done went for one of their phantom, unregistered guns and headed for the exit. Felicity scrambled after Sara, meeting her at the bottom of the stairs.

“What?” Sara asked curtly.

“Please don’t,” Felicity said quietly. “I mean. If you have to, you have to. But if you don’t have to. Please don’t.”

Sara turned away.

Felicity went back to her seat and saw that Oliver was getting that defeated look again. This time there was nothing she could really say. His knee was fucked, for the short term at the very least. Roy had killed someone tonight. Sara wanted to make sure he didn’t kill anyone else.

“She reminds me so much of me after I came home. When it just seemed...impossible to to believe in anything even resembling hope.”

“But you figured it out. And Sara’s a good person. She’ll figure it out, too.”

 

* * *

 

The only warning Felicity had was the opening of the door and the sound of a large man half-falling down the metal stairs. She practically levitated out of the chair and met him at the bottom, catching him in the world’s worst hug, like embracing a man shaped rock falling down a hill. Her boobs did not appreciate it.

“Oof,” she said. “I got you. I got you.” He hopped over to the gurney and levered himself up onto it, using her as a prop. “I never thought I’d say this, but is all the muscle mass strictly necessary?”

“How many of those venom arrows do we have?”

“Twenty. Sara only took the gun.”

“Doesn’t matter. Roy’s on his way here now. Let’s do the lidocaine.”

“Okay, hang on.”

“Just give me the whole thing.”

“Yes, of course, brilliant people get PharmDs so that you can use ‘the whole thing.’”

“Felicity.”

“The side effects of lidocaine overdose include heart arrhythmia, seizures, respiratory failure, and death. Will any of those things help you pump Roy full of venom tonight?”

“Felicity!”

“Give me a second! This is beyond not covered by my malpractice insurance. Hold still. Let me do this right. There. Now let me help get into your pants.”

“You are not going to help with that.”

“You want I should watch you try and worm your way into them on the floor? Is that what you want.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

And it was a good thing she helped him into the pants and up the stairs because the gunfire started almost immediately after.

 

* * *

 

Felicity looked at her battered friends. Oliver was limping and refusing a cane or a crutch.  Diggle cracked a tooth and probably bruised his jaw and was, in an ironic twist, refusing lidocaine. Sara wasn’t injured, but she looked hurt all the same. And Roy was full of pit viper juice, held by four point restraints to a steel table, and also a murderer. Felicity’s ulcer was becoming less of a joke and more of an inevitability.

“I would have killed him,” Sara confessed. She was looking at Oliver. “I was ready to.”

Suddenly tired herself, Felicity slipped away from them, to the practice mats. She pulled off her shoes and lay down and began to massage her bruised wrist and roll out her bad ankle. She had just started her point and flex exercises when she realized she could still hear them talking, but it was way too late to get back up and go for her phone and earbuds. Oliver was always quieter when he needed to be heard. But not most people.

“I spent six years in the darkness,” Sara was saying. “And I looked into the eyes of the devil and I gave him my soul….No. You deserve someone better. Someone who can harness the light that’s still inside you. But I’m not that person and I never will be….Don’t. I’m sorry….I just care too much about you to be with you.”

Felicity felt her own heart sink into her empty stomach. For Sara, because she believed what she was saying. For Oliver, because Sara had helped make him a little more human and a little more happy. And now they’d both be hurting. Felicity tried to play one of the games that Dr. Sauer had taught her. It was called ‘What Matters’ and it was supposed to help redirect her thoughts. It wasn’t nonsense positive thinking, but it was a non-depression-spiral way to end difficult days or moments. What mattered was that nobody died, even Roy. What mattered was that Thea had done something nice for her mother, even by accident. What mattered was that Oliver’s leg was still mostly attached to his body. What mattered was that Felicity had had been able to be useful tonight.

What mattered was that Republicans upstairs were gone and the longest, shittiest day was finally over.


	19. Chapter 19

_Razors pain you,_

_Rivers are damp,_

_Acids stain you,_

_Pills cause cramp._

_Guns aren’t lawful,_

_Nooses give,_

_Gas smells awful,_

_Might as well live_.

-Dorothy Parker

 

**Sterling, 2014**

“Felicity,” John said kindly, “I need your help.”

“How did you get into my apartment?”

“I told your super I was delivering dinner.”

“In that suit?”

“When Logan said jump,” Wallace Fennel was saying on her tiny tv screen, “did you actually say ‘how high’ or was there just an understanding that you would achieve max verticality?" Felicity located her remote and paused the new _Veronica Mars_ movie she’d already managed to watch four times. Frowning, she struggled up to her elbows.

“I said I was from Table Salt.”

“He didn’t show at the funeral.”

“No, he did not.” He stepped comfortably into her kitchen and began brewing coffee, heedless of the culinary debris of the last few days of takeout. “You need to get out of bed.” He sat down at the foot of her bed and smiled with a lack of judgment that was, frankly, a little irritating.

“I’m not working today,” she said, pulling her duvet up to her chin.

“We’re coming up on a year. I know anniversaries can be difficult.”

“Not for me. I love anniversaries. Can’t get enough of them.”

“Felicity.”

“Why can’t I have a day, Digg? I just want one day, to be left alone, and not have to take care of anybody else or impress the attendings or try and locate pit vipers to milk or worry about boards or write up any charts or sit around and--” She ducked down and, without shame, pulled the covers over her head.

“And what?” His voice was a little muffled, but perfectly intelligible.

“Do you think they’re dead?” It was an easier question to ask while hiding under a blanket like a five year old.

“No, absolutely not.”

“What if she is? What if Oliver is?”

John peeled back the covers.

“He’s not on the island,” she continued, eyes wet. “He’s not anywhere. She’s not anywhere. There’s a very rational explanation for why we can’t find them. Hoofbeats, not zebras.”

“Isabel Rochev came to the funeral.”

“The hell?” Felicity sat bolt upright in bed, revealing her plaid boxers and Huffle-Tuff t-shirt.

“She may have suggested that she’d be attending our funerals--yours and mine.”

“Back up. Back all the way up. The only way that tracks is if...”

“Yeah, she must have been injected with the Mirakuru. And I don’t think she’d come out of the woodwork to taunt us if Oliver weren’t the endgame. Believe me, he’s alive.”

“Crap.” She pushed hands through her hair, which appeared to have grown three sizes in the night. At some point in the last 24 hours, she must have washed it... “Then where the hell is he?”

“I know who to ask.”

“You have an Oracle I don’t know about?”

John looked at her.

“No. Nope. I am not going there.”

“Lyla set up the meeting--it’s perfectly safe.”

“I’m not going within a mile of those people and you know it.”

“Felicity, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think they’re that interested in you in particular.” He tilted his and examined her closely. He hadn’t been Special Forces for nothing.

“John. ARGUS and I have an understanding. I do not fuck with ARGUS, and they do not fuck with me.”

“Why would ARGUS even know about you, if it weren’t for Oliver?”

“I plead the Fifth. Go find out where he is and for G-d’s sake don’t mention my name. I’m taking a shower. For you. On my day off.”  


* * *

 

She was out of bed, bathed, dressed in clean jeans and  t-shirt, and had even brushed her hair by the time John returned, looking grim. Felicity zipped up her messenger back and tied her Mizunos.

“Where is he?”

“He’s at his lair.”

“The lair I have under surveillance? The lair with the motion activated cameras? The one under the foundry that I have wire for sound? That lair?”

“No, his other lair.”

“His other...?” She put her hands on her hips. “His other lair? His _other_ lair?”

“Yeah.”

“His other secret lair, that he kept from us? When we have no secret lairs? You and me, no secret retreats other than that haunted exam room that I already took him to?”

“We all have secrets, Felicity.”

“But not lairs!” She took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. “Okay, I’m tabling this for later. I will deal with this at a later time. I’m moving past it.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

 

* * *

 

She and Digg knew it was bad when he wouldn’t even turn to face them. He had a stillness about him that spoke more of psychological detachment than zen.

“How did you find me?” he asked quietly.

“Waller.”

“You missed the funeral. Thea had to do it alone.” She hadn’t meant to say it, but she’d been thinking it for hours. And as usual, plop, there it was.

“I'm sorry that I didn't go. I left for the cemetery. But I ended up here.” He didn’t sound sorry. He didn’t sound...anything.

“And here is?” She looked around at the unfinished space. There was no medical equipment, no computers, no fancy upgraded lights and storage. And this was where he went to lick his wounds, to feel safe.

“Here was a secondary facility in case the foundry was compromised. But it became somewhere that I could just go and...be alone. She's dead because of me. Five years ago, I could have cured Slade. And that would have prevented all of this. And now, all the people left that I care about, we are all in his crosshairs. It ends tonight.”

“How’s that?” she asked, like she didn’t already know. He was speaking in a tone and a cadence that would have rung alarm bells for anyone practicing medicine, much less emergency medicine in an abandoned neighborhood.

“I turn myself over to Slade. I end this vendetta.” He pushed himself to his feet, favoring his right knee.

“Oliver, you think this ends with you turning yourself over to Slade?”

“Yes, I do. After she was gone, he told me that one more person had to die. And then it would end. This ends for Slade when he kills me.”

“That’s not true,” Felicity said firmly. “He is not in his right mind and his decisions are not grounded in the real world. You cannot accept his reasoning. And even if it were true, I wouldn’t accept it and you shouldn’t either. I know we’ve been drawing dead this week...sorry...pun very not intended....” She took a deep breath and looked up into his eyes. “You have to play the cards you’re dealt, Oliver. Folding is not an option. The hero call is why I’m a doctor and not a felon. It’s why I’m here, with a good man in a hood, and not in McClure doing time. Please don’t do this.”

“Felicity. Someone once told me that the essence of heroism is to die so others can live.

Felicity was going to find that someone and break their fingers, one at a time. Instead, she opened her hand as he limped towards her. She held his hand, warm and dry as always, and tried not to squeeze.

“It's not that simple, Oliver.” And John would know from heroism at this point.

“Yes, it is. Slade's whole plan was to take everything from me. He did. He wins. All that's left is for me to die.” His eyes were wet and full and she suddenly felt terrible about mentioning Thea.

“No, Oliver. There’s got to be another way.”

“There isn't.” Oliver stepped away, dropped her hand, and navigated the stairs cautiously with his bad knee.

Felicity turned to Diggle, jaw set. Her gut churned.

“This bullshit will not stand,” she ground out, wishing she’d brought some TUMS.

“Amen to that,” Digg said, his mission face firmly in place. “Have you ever loaded a tranq dart?”

“Not exactly, but I know how to use haldol.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Diggle put a hand down as his phone buzzed. A rare expression of genuine surprise crossed his face. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He held up the screen to Felicity.

**L. LANCE: I know.**

**L. LANCE: I have information that you need.**

**L. LANCE: And I know.**

“No way.” Felicity put her hand on her forehead. “John, I am not tall enough to ride this ride.”

“I think you better buckle up. We’re bringing in the big guns.”

 

* * *

 

“I know you like I know my own name,” Felicity muttered bitterly to herself, in the privacy of her corner of the workout mat as she laced up her beloved Doc Martens. “I know you in your bones. This city needs the Arrow.” And all she’d been able to offer was stupid poker metaphors. And time. And secret-keeping. And doctoring. And minor surgery. And law-breaking. “Get it together, Smoak. This is not a good look on you.”

“How you doing over there?” Diggle asked.

“Great,” she said dryly. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting me a one-percenter to guillotine? You know, metaphorically.”

“One Fat Cat, trussed up like a luau pig, at your disposal.”

She was dressed all in black, gear she kept at the foundry, and smiling as she pulled her skull mask hoorag back up over her face, adjusting her glasses. Diggle stalked into the room ahead of her and pulled the hood off of man with the good suit and the bad beard.

“Meet Clinton Hogue,” Diggle said amiably.

“Go to hell,” Hogue said.

“Hi, Clint,” Felicity said flatly, unlocking the tablet screen. “I’ll be your interrogator tonight.”

“Is this a joke?”

“Pal,” John said, “ain’t nobody here laughing.”

“Ashley Madison? Really?” Felicity sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and held up the tablet where he could see it. “And if you’re thirty-eight, then I’m Kate Middleton. Six foot? What, do you stand on an apple crate on dates?” She snorted. “Aaaand now everyone you’ve ever messaged has your full name, home phone, and work address. Your wife’s going to love it.”

“What the hell’s this supposed to be?”

“I see you had a bank account in the Cayman Islands. And I do mean past tense. It’s a shame you never reported that income, because at least you could have taken the tax break now that half of it belongs to the Lutheran church’s homeless shelter in the Glades.” Felicity held up the screen again to show the worm his new balance. “What should I do with the rest?” she asked Diggle.

“Pat Tillman Foundation?”

“Great cause!”

“You bitch!”

“Why do they always say it like it’s a bad thing?” she asked Diggle. “At least I’m not some lazy, scumsucking parasite enriching myself on the backs of honest working women and men. Women and men like…your parents.”

“Wait!”

“They played by the rules, Clint. They paid taxes and they put the max into their 401k. Do you think they’d be disappointed to know their son is a serial cheater? On both his wife and his country? Your dad served in Vietnam, Clint. Do you think he’s proud you hide your money to avoid paying taxes for the VA services he still uses? Do you think your mother wanted to raise a man who treats women like they’re disposable? I guess we’ll find out... There go your tax returns. And your deleted emails.”

“Just--stop!”

“And this 401k of theirs.” Felicity waggled her fingers over the tablet. “They are about to make some bad investment decisions.”

“Stop. Stop! What do you want to know?”

She stood up and walked towards him, leaning in close enough to see the flecks in eyes. He could smell the coffee on her breath. Behind her, Digg’s face was unreadable.

“I want to know how the fuck you get out of bed in the morning.” She didn’t blink, just looked him over like bad biopsy results, then tilted her head to whisper directly into his ear, where even John couldn’t hear. “And I want to know when Rochev and Slade are making their move--or your father’s next digoxin refill isn’t going to be digoxin. And your mother won’t have enough money for a plain pine box”

 

* * *

 

In the back of the van, with new license plates installed since the night Roy was recaptured, Felicity double-checked her comm to be sure that she was talking to Oliver, and only Oliver. This was something she’d rather not be overheard saying.

“It’s me,” she said. “Um, I know you’ve worked really hard to not kill anyone for a while. But I don’t want you to forget that these aren’t men, anymore. And this isn’t peacetime, anymore.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” he said.

“Okay. Good. Come home to me. Us. Come home to us.”

She muted her mic and slapped her forehead. Get it together, indeed.


	20. Chapter 20

_Those who did better were those who didn't wait idly for help to arrive. In the end, with systems crashing and failing, what mattered most and had the greatest immediate effects were the actions and decisions made in the midst of a crisis by individuals._

-Sheri Fink _Five Days at Memorial_

 

**Starling, 2014**

“Is it my birthday?” she wondered aloud, cranking the steering wheel over. Sure, this had been a rough month. Year. It very, very was rare indeed that life gave you a gift-wrapped moment just like this. A nasty little smile crossed Felicity’s face as she floored the van directly into Isabel Rochev and watched her go flying.

“Why can’t the evil just get jobs like the rest of us?” she asked, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.

Diggle hopped to his feet and climbed into the van with a groan. “Thanks for the help. Any word from Oliver?”

“I think he blew something up…” But Felicity’s eyes were fixed firmly in the path of their headlights. Isabel was recovering. “Dig? Can I hit her again?”

“No, Felicity. No! Just go! Go, go, go!”

“You never let me have any fun,” she said, giggling a little maniacally as she tore across town.

Digg was looking at her in some consternation.

“What?” she asked. “She wasn’t fighting fair, either!”

“You run people over now, Dr. Smoak?”

“Not people,” she grinned. “Just her.”

 

* * *

 

Oliver and Laurel were waiting at the top of the hill, a little dusty, but Felicity didn’t see any arterial bleeding. That was one of her new rules during missions: no Oliver screaming, no arterial bleeding, no panicking.

“Are you okay?” Diggle asked him as they climbed out of the van.

“Yeah. You?” Oliver turned to look at her.

“I just got to run over Isabel Rochev with a van. I’m fabulous.”

Oliver’s mouth twitched, but Laurel looked properly horrified. They’d really only met a few hours ago, when Felicity had escorted her into the lair underneath the foundry. Felicity had been on her best behavior, doctor face on, underlying neuroses fully locked down. That ship had sailed, though, and it was every neurosis for herself now.

“Slade’s army,” Oliver said. “He has at least fifty men out there, all like him.”

“They’re everywhere.”

“We need to stop them.”

“Good news, then,” Felicity said. “Barry’s friends called--they have what they hope is a prototype Mirakuru antagonist, a cure, and it’s en route.”

“Where is it now?”

She pulled out her phone and it rang a very unreassuring number of times before someone picked up with a pained “Hello?”

“It’s Felicity Smoak,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Fourth street. I think. I don’t know what happened. A guy in a hockey mask came out of nowhere and attacked my car.”

“Stay where you are!” Oliver said in his Hood voice.

“I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I think my leg’s broken.”

Frak.

 

* * *

 

Digg was driving now and he was definitely in combat mode. Felicity thought he would probably have preferred a Humvee under any circumstances, but especially now that there was an army of evil super soldiers crawling over their city. Maybe the van handled better in the city, but she wouldn’t have said no to an MRAP.

“Three clicks to the bridge, sir,” she said.

John gave her A Look. Her Hood phone rang--This Little Piggy was calling.

“It’s for you.” Felicity passed it back to Oliver.

“What is it, Detective? ...We? ...We need help containing the soldiers. We’re working on something that may stop them, but we need more time.”

“Here we go,” Felicity said. “Hang a left for the bridge. Oh no.”

“Floor it!” Oliver yelled.

Digg cut the wheel without warning, probably trying to lose any potential tails. But it didn’t help. There were goons in parti-colored hockey masks literally crawling out of the woodwork. Were they keeping up? How could they possibly be keeping up or even gaining? Her chest was squeezing tight with fear and it was hard to focus on making room for air when--

There was a driverless, parked car directly in front of them.

“Hold on!” Diggle yelled.

Slow motion perception was a very, very real thing. Time, of course, didn’t actually pass any slower. If indeed it passed at all--there were a thousand opinions on the linear nature (or not) of time itself. But the perception of slowed time was a certainty. In fact, the biological truth was that your brain, sensing trauma, was taking in massive amounts of data and storing it as fast as possible. The density of your memory increased and time, therefore, appeared to pass differently. Which concept Felicity actually thought about as the van went airborne. And she worried about Oliver in the back, sans seatbelt. She worried about Digg, since the van was going to fall on the driver’s side. Then she worried about her history of traumatic brain injury and threw her left wrist up beside her head to keep it from slamming into the dash.

Imagine if you struck a tuning fork and held it against your funny bone. Now imagine if your entire arm were nothing but fragile, glass funny bones and it was held together with surgically implanted tuning forks. Felicity cradled her left arm to her chest, dazed, and frozen in place by the amount of pain she was experiencing. Knowing that it was temporary did not help, the perception of time being what it was. She could feel that she was resting against something warm, lumpy, and hard. It smelled like John’s leather jacket. She was absolutely going to ask him how he was as soon as she could open her mouth without screaming.

“Dig? Diggle!”

That would be Oliver. Good.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Is she breathing?”

What? Yes. Why did Oliver sound like that? Of course she was breathing. Wasn’t she? Wait. Nope, the seatbelt that had kept her from flying through the windshield had definitely knocked the wind out of her as well. _Come on, diaphragm_.

“Felicity!” Oliver said again.

She squeezed John’s fingers with her right hand. “She’s good, man.”

“We have to get out of here.”

“Yeah. I’m on it.”

She wasn’t unconscious, but she might as well have been for all the help she could give Diggle. He kicked the windshield out and started to drag her, but when he reached for her left arm, she couldn’t help pulling it away from him.

“GIve me an arm,” he said. “Come on. Now.”

She extended her right arm and, stooping painfully low, he took a hold of her wrist and upper elbow and dragged her out of the van. Felicity tried to stand up, but her legs were having none of it. Diggle was doing most of the standing for her. Oliver limped out of the van behind them and scooped her up just as the breath returned to her body in a gentle whoosh.

“Your knee,” she squeaked.

“Later,” he grunted.

“His knee,” she said to Diggle.

“Later,” Diggle said.

Oh great. Now they were ganging up on her. She laid her head against Oliver’s shoulder, solid beneath the green leather. Fuck it. She could berate them some other time. HIs gait was a little uneven, but otherwise Oliver didn’t falter in the least. All that time on the spawning ladder must be good for something. Felicity decided she would stay for a couple minutes, and when the pain in her wrist had faded a little and she wasn’t in immediate danger of puking on her boss, it was time to get down.

“I can walk,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder with her good hand. “It’s okay, I can walk now.”

“Where is he?” Oliver asked, keeping one hand under her right elbow. She pulled her phone out of her pocket with her left hand, which was alternately numb and tingling painfully. Focusing, she was able to keep a hold of it.

“Um. He’s close.” She used her good hand to dial back the injured courier.

“Where are you?” he asked, breathless.

“We’re here,” she said. “We’re close. Can you honk your horn?”

“Hold on. Wait! I can see your feet!”

“That’s not us.” Panic flared across her whole body, like ice water. “That’s not us!”

She heard his scream in the phone’s speaker and in her other ear. They were so close. But, as usual with Slade, they were just too late.

 

* * *

 

They were back in the Clocktower and enough of her adrenaline had faded to let her feel every sore spot in her body. There was no ice, but she bandaged her wrist using her good hand and her teeth while John and Oliver cleared and secured the building. Then she called Cisco and found out that there was no Plan B. So. Team Arrow had balcony seats to the end of Starling CIty.

“We can’t stop Slade’s men without the cure.”

“Then we’ll find another way.”

“There is no other way!”

Felicity flinched at the volume, too raw to control her reactions tonight. Oliver must have noticed, because he spoke more softly now.

“The foundry’s been compromised. We need to get Roy out of there.”

“I’m on it, Diggle said.

Felicity sat down on a crate and licked her lips, realizing her nose was bleeding. Figured. She tested her left fingers, found that they still responded appropriately, and decided her wrist probably wasn’t broken again.

“I didn’t know, Felicity. Five years ago, I was a completely different person”

She looked up at him, startled. Was this a confession? He didn’t look contrite, he looked...shellshocked.

“And I had no idea that something like this was even possible. I couldn’t have imagined. WHen you and Diggle brought me back to Starling City I made a vow to myself that I would never let anything like the Undertaking happen again.”

“You didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t _let_ anything happen. You--we--have fought back the whole way.”

“I have failed this city. Yao Fei. Shado. Tommy. My father, my mother. All that I have ever wanted to do is honor those people.”

“Failed? No one has failed yet.” Felicity stood up and approached him. “Oliver, you have saved this city every night that you go out and stop a mugging or a rape or a murder. You have saved it from gangs and ninja assassins and super drugs and really big guns. You will save this city from Slade, too.”

“I don’t know how,” he whispered.

“That’s okay.” She smiled, barely. “Me either.”

Felicity put her right arm up and over his neck and held on. At first he didn’t respond at all and she was afraid he might just stay there like a statue and allow a hug to happen, which would be mortifying. But then he softened a little so she could grip him tighter. And eventually she felt his hand at the small of her back, warming her from the outside in. She could easily have stayed there all night, but her messenger bag started buzzing.

Reluctantly, she let go of him. It must be Digg. There must be something wrong with Roy. But it definitely wasn’t Digg. It was the mayor.

“Oliver, this is your phone.”

“What do you want?” He had his back to her, no chance she could eavesdrop. “It’s already too late.” His posture straightened a fraction. “Why should I trust you?”

 

* * *

 

Roy was looking pretty dead, again, but Felicity was getting more used to it. Diggle laid him out on a makeshift table and hung the IV bag that Felicity gave him. She adjusted his neck and head and checked his ABCs one more time.

“How much venom do we have to keep him under?”

“An hour and a half, maybe two,” she said.

“Let’s go,” Oliver said.

“Guys,” Felicity said. “I know I’m not a tactician. But wouldn’t this be a great way to draw the two of you out into the open and kill you?”

They paused, and Oliver took a step back towards her. “Yeah,” he admitted. “It would.”

“Oh. Don’t fuck this up and get killed, okay?”

He reached up and squeezed her shoulder gently. Then she was alone with Roy. Again.

“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” she said. “Me, beat up. You, unconscious. I do seem to have that effect on men.”

 

* * *

 

“I knew Cisco had a flair for the dramatic, but glow in the dark serum seems a little excessive.” She was still smiling as she looked at the outrageous cure STAR had produced. It looked like something she’d once done shots of a Burning Man, immediately blacking out the rest of the evening.

“So if we inject one of Slade’s soldiers with this?”

“Mr. Hyde goes back to Dr. Jekyll. If Dr. Jekyll were already a violent con.”

“Assuming they got the recipe right.”

“We need to test it.” And then Oliver looked at Roy.

“What?” Felicity turned on him. “No. No!”

“Felicity. We need to know.”

“There are a thousand hopped up thugs out there! That aren’t also full of viper venom! And aren’t our friends! Go perforate one of them!”

“We need to know before we go out there. One way or the other.”

There was no way she could stop Oliver short of shooting him. And she didn’t want to shoot him. Everything she’d ever learned and remembered about drug trials flew through her mind. Informed consent. Internal review boards. Animal trials. Absolutely nothing about untested experimental bioluminescent formula delivered to unconsenting, unconscious patients with contraindications like snake toxicity.

Oliver filled a syringe and approached Roy. Felicity shadowed him, like a resident on an intern. He put a single hand on Roy’s chest and apologized. Felicity didn’t breathe. And then Oliver hesitated.

“I can’t.”

She would have said something back, but This Little Piggy was calling her phone again.

“Detective?”

“Are you near him?”

“Uncomfortably so.”

“Are you near a TV?”

“I’m about to be.”

“Turn it on.”

She did. The chyron on her tablet read: MILITARY ARRIVES IN STARLING CITY.

“Oh shit,” Felicity said.

“Yep,” Lance said, and hung up.

She passed the phone to Oliver and then turned to John.

“This is exactly why I don’t fuck with ARGUS,” she hissed at him.

“Amanda!” Oliver roared into the phone.

Felicity bit her lip and turned back to the syringe. An hour’s worth of venom left, tops. Oliver had a laundry list of the dead on his conscience. If she tried this now, she might kill Roy. If she waited an hour, she might _have_ to kill Roy. She hadn’t failed ethics, but she hadn’t exactly passed with flying colors, either. A laundry list of the dead. Felicity calmly pushed up Roy’s sleeve and exposed his forearm and inner elbow. This might make her a bad doctor. This might make her a murderer. But it also might work. Sometimes, you had to roll the hard six.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said to Roy, and then she depressed the plunger.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't speak Hebrew, beyond the prayers, so please tell me if I'm using the correct case for that insult...

_ I am faithful, I do not give out, _

_ The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, _

_ These and more I dress with an impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.) _

-Walt Whitman, “The Wound-Dresser”

 

**Starling, 2014**

“The cure’s not working,” Oliver said.

“It’s too soon to know,” she countered, her third and fourth fingers fixed against Roy’s radial artery, his pulse steady and reassuring. “There are a lot of factors at play here. Including snake venom.” 

John’s phone began to buzz angrily.

“What’s that?” Oliver asked.

“I dropped some motion sensors on the stairs after I brought Roy up,” John said. “In case they found us.” He pulled his phone out and checked the screen. “They found us.”

Under Felicity’s hand, Roy’s wrist moved. She gave a little yelp and stumbled backwards as Roy jumped to his feet, looking completely bewildered and completely awake. That was fast.

“Doc? Where am I?” he asked.

She opened her mouth to try and fudge an answer when a trapdoor burst open and the goons were upon them. Roy and Oliver were on him at once, and had their backs turned when a gloved hand came up through the floorboards and grabbed her ankle. She was too surprised to scream, but luckily Digg noticed when she fell to one knee, holding onto the scaffolding with her free hands to avoid being dragged further down.

“Hold still!” he commanded and shot straight through the eyepiece of a hockey mask.

Meanwhile, Oliver fired one of his zip-line arrows and out they went. Roy first--his survival instinct was stronger than any of theirs. Digg followed, clutching the STAR labs briefcase in one hand. Felicity stepped up after him, and her body revolted. No. A car crash, an ambush, glow-in-the-dark medicine, fine. But it would not jump from a clock tower. Not a tower of any kind, really. She almost stepped backwards, back into the relative safety of the crowd of turbo-charged, pain immune murderers.

But then she was wrapped in the smell of leather and Old Spice and plummeting to the pavement below. She definitely screamed then and it was possible that Oliver may have laughed, but it was inaudible over the arrival of a helicopter. They landed with a distinct thud and Oliver held up her for a few moments to make sure she wasn’t going to swoon or some nonsense. She righted herself just in time to see Lilah, secured via harness to the helicopter, fire a rocket launcher into the clocktower and eliminate the threat.

“Your wife is such a badass,” Felicity said.

“Ex-wife.”

“Yeah, sure, buddy."

 

* * *

 

“That’s good,” Felicity said. “Now just fill it to the top with the haldol.”

“What’s that for?”

“Well you came up swinging, literally, so I thought we’d better add a little something extra to make sure these guys stay down when they go down. Of course,I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m making all of this up as I go.” She smiled. “You should have seen the drug cocktails I was giving you while you were under. I kept trying to help you metabolize the Mirakuru faster, and nothing seemed to actually hurt you, so I kind of...well, I may have experimented a little bit.”

“Well, it seems like I missed a lot.” 

“Yeah,” she was non-committal. “I know we haven’t had time to do a proper neuro exam. What do you remember?”

“Leaving town and heading to Bludhaven. Was I out cold the whole time?”

Felicity looked real hard at her syringe, like this was some kind of real medicine she was practicing and not 100% Star Trek bullshit. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Roy, cheekbones like glass, haunted and confused.

“Doc?”

“You were out. The whole time.”

Felicity was saved from elaborating by the arrival of a small army of mercenaries, and Sara. Everyone went on high alert, except possibly Felicity, who was mostly relieved. 

“Oh,” she said with a crooked smile. “Why didn’t you call before inviting your assassin friends? We’re all out of cocktail weenies.”

Sara reached out and gave Felicity’s shoulder a squeeze. Her sense of relief increased, even if Oliver was pissed, because at least the cavalry had arrived.

“What is she doing here?”

“I asked her to come.”

“I am Nyssa. Daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, heir to the demon.”

“Dr. Felicity Smoak,USMLE and ABEM board-certified and licensed to practice emergency medicine in the great state of Washington.”

“Indeed.” Nyssa was kind enough to look respectful, if not actually impressed.

“I’ve passed level 350 in Candy Crush, too.”

That earned her a very arched eyebrow. What, did they have threading in Nanda Parbat? A good brow bar?  _ Focus, Smoak _ . Nyssa was turning back to Oliver.

“You may not want my help, Mr. Queen. But there’s little question you are in desperate need of it.”

 

* * *

 

In scrub bottoms, pink sneakers, and her Bad Wolf graffiti t-shirt, Felicity somehow did not feel the least bit out of place on the executive floor of Queen Consolidated. The last time she had been here was in the fall, after she and Digg had retrieved their fearless leader from the North China Sea. Oliver had made her jump out of a window on that day, too. She was contemplating the body of Isabel Rochev with disturbing satisfaction when her phone rang.

“Serpico, is that you?”

“Goddammit, Smoak, I need to talk to him,” Quentin yelled.

“Hey!” she objected. “We’re having kind of a night over here, okay?”

“I need to see him--now.”

“Fine! We’re at QC downtown. I’ve unlocked the elevators, so come on up to the top.”

“Is--is the woman in black there?”

“Yes, she’s here.” Felicity softened somewhat. “She’s safe.”

“I’m on my way.”

Felicity met him at the bank of elevators. The Detective was looking a little worse for wear, and hellbent on finding the Hood.

“Why does this Wilson guy got such a hard on for the Queens?”

“I don’t know,” Felicity said, grateful she was still had a gift for lying to cops. “It’s a good thing Thea and Oliver got out in time. Hey, listen, there’s someone here and this is me giving you a heads up, before you--”

“What’s she doing here?” Lance’s gun was out and pointed directly at the Heir to the Demon, aka the cavalry. 

Fucking cops.

“She’s here to help,” Sara said, rushing forward. “Just trust me, please.”

He holstered his gun. “I guess today I’ll have to work with anybody who can help get my daughter back.”

“What?” Sara gasped.

“One of these masked guys, they took Laurel. I couldn’t stop them. Believe me, I...I tried.”

_ Sorry, your princess is in another castle. Again. Some more. _ Felicity set aside her feelings of frustration for another time--her phone was ringing again.

“Smoak,” she said quietly, turning her back.

“Yo, it’s your squatter.”

“Sin?”

“Remember when you told me to call if I saw something weirder than a bunch of hopped up goons in two-tone party masks?”

“I do.”

“Well, there’s not a bunch of them, there’s a fucking shitton, and they’re all headed for the Giordano tunnel. Together. It’s like a BDSM parade down here.”

“Stay away from the windows, Sin. And don’t let anyone inside until this is over.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice. Fuck, if I wanted to live like this, I’d move to Portland.”

Felicity hung up and turned back to the boys.

“Frick, Frack,” she called. “New development. All of Slade’s men are gathering at the Giordano tunnel.”

“I thought these guys were trying to destroy the city, not escape it.”

“ARGUS is going to level the city to stop them from getting out. That’s what Slade’s planning on. He knows Waller’s tactics.”

“Fortunately, with Slade’s men attempting to leave via the tunnel, all our targets will be grouped in a single place.”

Felicity liked the way Nyssa thought. Always looking on the bright side.

“We need to take it,” Oliver said. “Gather your men.”

“What about Laurel?” Quentin objected. “Wilson took her for a reason.”

“I know what it is,” Oliver admitted. “But the city comes first.”

At that moment, Felicity would have given at least one of her toes if Diggle could overhear this little exchange. He would die. He would totally die.

“This is my daughter. This is your sister! You can’t just leave her like this!” Quentin was going to give himself an aneurysm. “Look, I know you said you were trying another way and I respect that. But Slade WIlson, his men, they’re monsters. And monsters, they need to be destroyed. You’ve killed before,” Lance dropped his voice. “Tonight, I suggest you get back in the habit.” And with that nasty little pronouncement, he left.

“That son of a bitch,” Felicity hissed, crossing to Oliver. “I swear to G-d, I’ll--you are not his thug. You don’t work for him. You don’t owe him anything. ”

“He’s not wrong! I’ve lost everything because I’m fighting Slade Wilson with one hand tied behind my back. The man murdered my mother. I have to kill him.”

“Even if that’s true, Oliver, can you get close enough to him to do it?”

He gave her a black look.

“I’m not...casting aspersions, or whatever. I’m not. But so far, between Slade’s body armor and his roach-like survival instincts, we’re not making a lot of progress. He’s been planning this con for five years.”

“So what does that leave us? I can’t cure him. I can’t capture him. I can’t even out-think him!”

“That’s because you’re you!” Felicity immediately slapped herself on the forehead. “That came out so beyond wrong. Damn it. Okay, hang on. What I meant was, Oliver, that you are the most honest person I know.”

“I lie all the time!” he said, exasperated.

“No. You tell the same lie over and over.”  Felicity held up her hands, in a gesture of weighing unequal things. “You came back from a desert island and you didn’t engineer a utility belt or build a costume out of technical fabrics or buy a car-mobile of any kind. You rode around on your own motorcycle wearing a secondhand hood and shooting your bow and arrow at a list of people you found in a hardcopy book. You are the most straightforward vigilante on this planet.”

“None of this helps me.” His jaw was clenched tight enough to crack molars.

“What would your mother do, Oliver?”

“Excuse me?” Oliver looked so pissed that she actually took a step back.

“Yeah. I said it. Your mother was the most subtle, terrifying woman in Starling. She would do anything, tell any lie for you or Thea. She was five moves ahead of all of us. So what would Moira Queen do?”

Because they were alone and because she was watching very closely, she saw the moment that it happened. He had always taken after Robert, whom Felicity had never met but whose photograph had hung above the desk in the Clinic. Thea was the one who looked like Moira, the chin, the native intelligence. But for just a moment, in between eye-blinks, Felicity saw the man who called Director Waller ‘Amanda’--and he did not look like his father

“Felicity?”

“Yeah.”

“We have to go.”

  
  


* * *

 

It wasn’t a cold night, that late in the spring, but she had only had her t-shirt and scrubs. There goosebumps on the arms she had wrapped tight around Oliver’s torso. Her cheek was pressed as tight against his back as her glasses would allow. This had to be the least comfortable and most exciting form of transportation there was, riding a motorcycle and using another person as your seatbelt. The thrill faded somewhat when she realized they were at the Queen mansion. The very abandoned Queen mansion.

“Oliver?”

“Inside.”

She followed him in, rubbing some heat back into her arms.

“What the hell are we doing? The city’s going to pot out there.”

“I know.” He took a deep breath. “You need to stay here.”

“Are you hiding a server farm I don’t know about?”

“No, just...stay.”

“And do what?” she looked around the cavernous interior. “Redecorate?”

“This isn’t a joke, Felicity.”

“I’m not joking!”

“And I am not asking. I will come and get you when this is all over.”

“Hard pass.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Felicity.”

“Oliver.”

“I need you to be safe.”

“I don’t want to be safe. I want to be with you!”

“I can’t let that happen.”

“For the love of-- Did I miss some frontal lobe damage on one of your scans? Did you drop yourself on your own head and not tell me?”

“Slade took Laurel because he wants to kill the woman I love.”

“So what?”

“So he took the wrong woman.”

“Sara’s still going!”

“No. Felicity.” Another deep breath. “I need  _ you _ to be safe.”

“Oh. Ohhhh.”

“I love you.” 

He said it so gravely, as if it was a dangerous a secret as any he kept. And now it was her secret, too. It was without flaw, just for her. She would love this secret back, forever. Or until she felt Oliver press a spring-loaded syringe of STAR labs’ cure into her hand.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

 

* * *

 

The heart was not always a poetic organ. It wasn’t until the 1250’s CE that it began to stand for courtly, romantic love in the West. Far, far before than that, the much more scientific Egyptians had grasped its essential physical importance in the circulatory system. And they believed that when a woman died, it would be her heart weighed against the feather of truth to determine her ultimate fate. In the mummification process, the heart was never removed from the body, but left intact, secure. The Egyptians knew their stuff.

During her surgery rotations, Felicity had once been allowed to scrub in on an organ and tissue retrieval operation. It was the closest thing to transcendence she had ever experienced. The donor, who had been nearly decapitated in a cataclysmic interstate pileup, was young and healthy. And his wife was heartbroken and deeply gracious in a way that most people would never understand. So she signed the papers and all the working parts of the love of her life were disassembled. They began by removing the viable and beating heart, cradled it in gloved hands.

Surgeons always worked with a respect for the mechanics of the human body. But she had never seen them practice their craft with such profound reverence until then. That man’s body became an altar and they transfigured every organ into another life to be shared. The surgery lasted almost six hours and when it was over, Felicity went back to her crappy rented room by the hospital and cried and cried.

Now she had dissociative feeling that came from seeing something outside the body, weighed in the palm of a hand, that should be inside and connected to vital parts. And the same desire to start crying and not stop. It was like Oliver had just removed and then handed her back her own heart, or maybe liver.  _ Here, take this I don’t need it anymore _ .  _ Do you understand? Oh, yes, of course. Of course I do. I am the most understanding _ .

There was a half hour between when Oliver left her and the goons arrived. It was torturous. For about thirty seconds, she was able to sit quietly on the majestic stairs of the Queen mansion. Then her mind moved to her eminent kidnapping and possible death. Then it moved onto other deaths. Then it moved onto her mother, and if she’d felt like this while she waited--

“No wallowing,” she said out loud, and forced herself to her feet. Shit. She was supposed to be remembering that there were eyes on her. What would a Felicity with her own working heart do? She climbed the stairs and went to Thea’s room, where she’d helped put Roy’s leg back together. She found a small but top shelf selection of booze in the closet, under an Herve Leger bandage dress in scarlet. She allowed herself exactly two shots of Herradura, one for nerves, and one for courage. Then she secured the syringe inside her bra, where no one ever looked for anything.

After that, she drifted around upstairs and into Oliver Queen’s bedroom. She didn’t recognize any him in the classy upholstery or tasteful art. Did it look like this when he was a teenager? Tassels everywhere? What was up with rich people and tassels? It did smell like him, though. After walking the room once, she decided the hell with it, and climbed on top of his bed. Everything had been freshly laundered and the threadcount could have competed with her SAT scores. If Slade was watching and wondering why she was rubbing her cheek against Oliver’s pillows, then let him wonder.

But even that could only distract her for so long before the battery acid in her stomach started to claw its way up again. Felicity rolled onto her back and tried to play some of Dr. Sauer’s games.  _ My feet feel sad. My legs feel hurt. My stomach feels lonely. My arms feel empty. My heart feels left behind _ .

“I said no wallowing,” she reprimanded.  _ I see a bed canopy. I feel a silk-cashmere blend bed throw. I hear no thugs coming up the stairs _ . “No wallowing.” She recited the Sh’ma, in Hebrew and in English. She recalled her favorite med school mnemonics. Kidney Function: A WET BED. Aortic regurgitation: CREAM. Treat a myocardial infarction with O BATMAN. Types of shock: RN CHAMPS. Deliver bad news: SPIKES. She went over Oliver’s unaltered medical record mentally, the truth behind the ‘motorcycle accidents.’ She recited the Sh’ma again.

Felicity had every intention of going quietly. Not only was it sane and rational, it was also the plan. The plan had been unspoken, of course, and consisted of being handed a hypodermic needle while being (metaphorically) punched in the gut. But no rational vigilante would expect her to fight Mirakuru flunkies. So she was definitely going quietly. Right up until she finally did hear two thugs on the stairs and watched them enter the room. And then they touched her and she lost all her resolve.

“No,” she said and gasped. “No!”

It was asinine to try and fight roided out felons in kevlar. But that’s exactly what she did, because apparently there was a part of her own frontal lobe that was non-functioning. The struggle tore her t-shirt and bloodied her nose. She tore the mask off of one man and should have fractured the orbital bone, but no blow that she landed made a difference. Still, in her panic, she couldn’t stop herself, even biting down on a hand, until one of them grabbed her left wrist and twisted it behind her back. Then Felicity shrieked and fell to her knees, totally limp.

Thing One grabbed her by the waist and threw her over a meaty shoulder where she called him every name she knew in English, Spanish, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Thing Two must have been a Spanish speaker, though, because he grabbed her by the pony tail, lifted her head up, and backhanded her when she made a particular suggestion.

“No damage,” Thing One admonished.

“When I’m done with you,” Felicity coughed and spat blood, “you’ll wish that all I’d done was fuck your mother, you knuckle-dragging troglodyte.”

Things One and Two scuffled for a moment, allowing Felicity to get in a solid kick at One’s ear. That hurt no matter how much you were juicing. Thing Two held her tighter, letting his fingernails sink through the polyester of her scrubs. The car ride, which she passed in the trunk, was not that long. They were still in the city, which meant that Oliver was still close, which meant this wouldn’t last that much longer either way. Sure enough, not longer after being removed from the trunk, she was deposited in front of Slade Wilson, sans mask, but otherwise completely armed and armored as Deathstroke.

“What happened to her face?” he asked.

“She resisted,” said Thing Two.

“Imagine that, חתיכת חרא!” Everything Fetter had taught her about how to survive these kinds of situations had gone out the window, replaced by a toxic combination of panic and rage. Adrenaline was making her mean and stupid and she didn’t care. It turned out, if you took away her white coat and her stethoscope, she was just an animal like the rest of them. 

“Welcome, Miss Smoak.”

“It’s Doctor Smoak,” she corrected, climbing to her feet. If she was going to die tonight, on this dirty concrete floor, she was damn well going to be addressed as was her right.

“Doctor. And now I have everything I need.”

“What you need is a psychotropic cocktail, you whacked out narcissist.”

Slade smiled slyly. “You know, I had my doubts about you. On paper, you’re not that impressive.”

“I’m about to finish a residency in emergency medicine at twenty-five! On paper, I’m a star.”

“But not quite to Oliver’s taste, I think.” He walked a slow circle around her, appraising. “But now that I see you…” One finger pulled away her torn shirt, exposing her shoulders and back to nearly the waist. “Tell me, does he like your tattoos?”

“Once my clothes are off, we don’t actually spend all that much time talking.”  _ Deflect, deflect, deflect _ .

He threw his head back and shouted with laughter. It went on too long and showed too many teeth.

“V’ahavta, et Adonai Eloheicha, b’chol l’vav’cha uv’chol nafsh’cha uv’chol--”

“What is that? Are you praying”

“It’s a prayer,” she said. “It’s the prayer you pray when death is coming.”

“Very wise of you, Dr. Smoak. Oliver certainly has a talent for attracting women who are smarter and braver than he is.”

“And what kind of women do you attract?”

He leaned in close and she could smell the oil from his guns. “Your kind,” he said. Slade took another step and they were touching, lightly, all along the front of their bodies. Her whole body tensed as he pawed in the back pocket of her jeans for her phone, maintaining eye contact as he opened a line to Oliver.

“You’ve been busy, kid,” Slade said.

“...m’odecha. V’hayu had’varim ha-eileh…”

“And I pity them. But once again, you miss the point. I have the one you love. You’re going to meet me where I say. Otherwise I am going to kill her.”

Felicity closed her eyes. “...asher anochi m’tzav’cha hayom al l’vavecha.…”

“You’re done when I say you’re done! I was surprised. I thought you had a thing for stronger women. But now that I’ve met her, I can see the appeal. She is quite lovely, your Felicity.”

Fetter would be so impressed at her memory. Not her memory in general, but the fact that it contained any Hebrew at all. She missed him, too, so much. He of all people could appreciate this situation.  _ Recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down, and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. _

“...Just like my blade is against the neck of your beloved.”

“...ani Adonai Eloheichem.”

“Drop the bow, kid”

“Emet,” Felicity whispered and opened her eyes. Oliver was there. The hardest part was over. Slade’s sword turned up and into her neck, pushing her chin up and back even as he gripped her wrist like a vise. 

“Do it,” Slade said.

Oliver lowered the bow to the floor. Behind her, Felicity could hear Thing Two frog-marching Laurel into the room.  _ Don’t look at her. Focus. Look at Oliver.  _

“Yes. Countless nights dreaming of taking from you all that you took from me.”

“By killing the woman I love.”

_ My feet feel anxious. _   


“Yes.”

“Like you love Shado.”

_ My legs feel steady. _

“Yes.”

“You see her. Don’t you? Well what does she look like in your madness, Slade? What does she say to you?”

She registered Oliver’s words, but couldn’t quite hear them over her own heartbeat. Her vision was blurry with sweat and adrenaline. The sword fell away a little as Slade relaxed his grip on her wrist somewhat. Felicity dropped to her knees, the cold floor painful. The blade followed her neck from right to left. Oliver Queen had a scary good poker face.  _ My head feels clear. _

“I remember her being beautiful. Young. Kind. She would be horrified by what you’ve done in her name.”

“What I have done. What I have done is what you lack the courage to do! To fight for her!” The sword was behind her now, so sharp that little hairs from her lopsided ponytail were falling away like hail. “So, when her body lies at your feet, her blood wet against your skin, then you will know how I feel!”

“I already know how you feel. I know what it’s like to hate. To want revenge.”

The sword was moving again, the margin of error and safety widening. _ My arms feel strong. _ Felicity kept her eyes resolutely on Oliver’s face as her right hand moved towards the waistband of her jeans and then the bottom hem of her sagging t-shirt and then to her bellybutton. She extracted the syringe from her bra and lowered it back down.  _ My hands feel ready. _

“And now I know how it feels to see my enemy so distracted he doesn’t see the real danger is right in front of him.”

Felicity sprang to her feet, left arm still trapped, pulled the needle’s cap off with her teeth, and plunged it as deep into Slade’s neck as she could. The neck was an extremely dangerous site to shoot up--big blood vessels, other fragile tubes. Her thumb released the depressor and shot what was hopefully his carotid full of STAR’s cure. And if it wasn’t his carotid, hopefully it would rupture something just as vital.

“Kill her!” Slade roared.

Felicity had not thought this far ahead. There was no plan beyond stabbing Slade in the neck. She paused, totally frozen in place. Now what? Thankfully, the sisters Lance were not so handicapped. Sara promptly shot Thing Two and Laurel punched him for good measure.

“Get them out of here!”

Sara grabbed Felicity by the elbow and half-dragged her out of the warehouse as Felicity tried not to trip over her own two feet. Sara made sure they were safe outside before turning to Laurel and embracing her. Felicity put her hand on the outside wall and discovered that she felt almost fine-ish. The approaching adrenaline crash was far preferable to the waiting. Someone was trying to touch her. Annoyed, she brushed at her shoulders.

“Sweetheart, it’s just a blanket.”

Confused, she turned and found Detective Lance trying to put a mylar emergency blanket on her. She batted his hands away.

“Sweetheart?”

“Poetic license,” he said, proffering the blanket again.

“I’m fine, detective.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Neither do you. Have you been checked out? I don’t like your color.”

“My color is fine.”

“Come here, let me just--”

“And now I’m going to take this blanket to someone who will appreciate it.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” she said cheerfully. In reply, Lance flipped her the bird, but they were both smiling. Felicity wasn’t really cold, but she was starting to get a little nauseous and shaky.

“Hey!” Sara called out, jogging towards her. “Here, take this.” Before Felicity could object, Sara’s black leather jacket was off and around her shoulders.

“Oh no--I can’t--”

“I got backups,” Sara said with a wink. “I get stabbed a lot."

“I couldn’t--”

“I know you don’t want your guys to see your back. Besides, your ride’s here.”

Sure enough. black Suburban with mirror tint rolled up and the back door closest to her opened. A man with a lantern jaw and bad shoes that screamed  _ Secret Agent Man  _ stepped out.

“Doctor Smoak?” he asked.

“Nope. Not here.” She turned on her heel--Sara had vanished entirely. Felicity pushed her arms into the sleeves of the Black Canary jacket.

“Mr. Diggle is waiting for you at the airfield.”

“Right,” Felicity said over her shoulder. “Mr. Diggle knows I’d never get in a car with one of you people.”

“He also said to tell you…” The agent sighed heavily, looking pained. “To tell you that you were right, he was wrong, and Director Waller is in fact a succubus working to unmake the fabric of our world.”

Felicity blinked and turned back. “Well okay then.”

“I can take you to him,” said Lantern Jaw.

“No, I think I’ll follow,” she hedged, looking suspiciously at the dark interior of the SUV. “There’s a detective here that can give--”

“Felicity,” the Hood said from behind, making her jump. “It’s okay. Get in the car.”

“Are you--”

“Later. Just get in the car.”

Felicity climbed in and offered Oliver a hand, which he took, since his right leg was clearly killing him. Lantern Jaw climbed into the passenger seat and passed back two bottles Lemon-Lime Gatorade. She glared at hers, wanting the sugar, but afraid of the source. Oliver opened his, sipped, then passed it to her. She raised her eyebrows and he nodded. They swapped bottles and drank. Lantern Jaw watched them in the rear view mirror and Felicity glowered back.

“It’s okay,” the Hood repeated.

“I’ll decide when it’s okay.”

Digg was waiting for them on the tarmac. He opened the door for Felicity, who hurried around to help Oliver out of the car, elbowing past Lantern Jaw. She couldn’t see much, but it was clear Slade had beaten the Arrow badly, until he hadn’t. Oliver’s gait was stiff and she could tell his ribs were sore by how carefully he put his hand around her shoulders. Digg made sure their path was cleared towards the cargo plane as another SUV pulled in behind them. 

This one was a Humvee, manned by ARGUS soldiers. With a certain amount of relish, they log rolled an unconscious and bound Slade Wilson from the back. He was trussed up like Houdini going into an escape trick. No one flinched when he hit the pavement. 

“Don’t tell me he’s coming with us,” Felicity said.

“More like we’re going with him.” Digg forestalled her reply with a raised hand. “I know. But Oliver asked that he be...contained. And Waller agreed to let us witness it for ourselves.”

“I’ll understand if you don’t want to come,” Oliver said.  _ Do you understand? _ Felicity lifted her chin.

“As if. I want to see what the evil empire has in-flight wifi that actually works. What kind of plane is that anyway?”

“It’s an Airbus Atlas. Isn’t she a beaut?” Digg looked...fond?

“It does fly, right? Those propellers actually turn fast enough?”

“Let’s go,” Oliver said.

Inside, it was clear that the plane had been retrofitted for a variety of purposes. It could probably carry enough tanks and shock troops to invade smaller nations. There were armed guards, locked rooms, bunks, and a flight surgeon waiting for them in the sleek, three-bed medical facility. Felicity bared her teeth at the other doctor who didn’t blink. Digg chased him away, and a guard, and made sure it was just the three of them when he locked the door behind them. Then he pulled out a small device from the inside of his jacket that looked like a beeper and pushed a button.

“Audio jammer,” he explained. “This should make sure we have some privacy. You two look like hell.”

“Felicity first.” Oliver groaned, lifting himself onto one of the beds and extended his right leg cautiously in front of him.

“Huh?”

“Your neck,” Digg said gently.

She put a hand up and felt thin rivulets of tacky, drying blood. Then she could feel them stinging, like long papercuts that circled like a choker.

“You have a black eye, too,” John added, he was rummaging through drawers, emerging with a clean ARMY t-shirt and sweatpants.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Oliver bit out.

“I didn’t mean to fight back when they showed up,” she explained. “It was dumb. It just kind of...happened.” 

“Here.” John handed her the clothes. “Get changed and I’ll clean you up.” He turned his back and Oliver closed his eyes while she changed out of her ruined t-shirt and scrubs and into the clean clothes. She put the Canary jacket back on over the top.

“I’m decent,” she said, and hopped up onto the bed facing Oliver’s. John cleaned her face and neck, using a few butterfly bandages on the cuts and dressing them with practiced ease. Then he produced a wrist brace that would tide her over until she could verify that the pins and rods hadn’t been compromised.

“I don’t think you’ll scar,” he said, looking at her neck. “They’re shallow.”

“It was a pretty sharp sword,” she said. “Not that I have much sword experience. But it felt pretty sharp.”

This did not improve Oliver’s mood. Felicity did not care. She and Digg helped him out of the leather and Felicity gave him as thorough an exam as she could without an MRI, which she would really have liked given the state of his face. There was bruising coming up on his throat and some petechiae in his eyes. Eventually she got to the knee.

“You know, this is going to need surgical repair one day soon.”

“No,” Oliver said.

“Okay, but saying that doesn’t actually fix your ligaments. You know that, right?”

“Digg, can we have a moment?”

“Sure--I owe Lyla a phone call.” John smiled to himself and ducked out of the box-like room and back into the airplane.

“I’ll give you some cortisone, and some oxy, which will make you feel better in the short term. And we’ll be rehabbing it more diligently this summer. But the knee--”

“I didn’t mean for you to be hurt.”

“Oliver.” Felicity sighed and leaned back against the other bed, so they were able to look each other in the eye. “You did what you did because you knew I could take it. I’m not sorry about that.”

“I know, but--”

“No more sorries. I know how to handle a little punishment. That’s not your fault. It’s an asset. I just wish…” She looked down and studied his poor, swollen knee. “You could have told me the truth, on the way to your house.”

“I needed us to sell it. For Slade.”

“I know. Because it’s unthinkable. But I could have sold it anyway.” She managed to meet his eyes again.

“I can see that.”

“Anyway.” She gestured towards his knee. “One day soon.” And Felicity turned her back to find the cortisone.

“One day soon,” Oliver agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. This last one took some time to write. Thanks for hanging in there with me. I would love to hear any feedback you have!


End file.
